Biden kept in dark by aides as campaign struggled, reporter claims

Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Josh Dawsey claimed that there was a “fierce” effort by some of former President Joe Biden’s top aides to insulate the president from pollsters and even his campaign staff during his 2024 election bid.

Dawsey told Democratic strategist James Carville and journalist Al Hunt on the “Politics War Room” podcast on Thursday that while some of Biden’s aides had serious concerns about the president’s viability as a candidate, other senior aides who “really bought in for a second term” fought to keep the president in the race “no matter what.”

The investigative reporter’s new book, “How Trump Retook the White House and Democrats Lost America,” was cited by Hunt, who noted the “myopic selfishness of Biden and his advisers” detailed in the book.

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Josh Dawsey ((Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images))

“The folks who were around Biden, his sort of core group of aides, really kept a lot of information from him, kept a lot of people from him, particularly after, you know, that debate in June, sort of the disastrous infamous debate in June. And what we sort of found here was that there were lots of warning signs throughout the years 2023 and even early 2024, even before the debate,” Dawsey told Hunt.

According to Dawsey, both the Democratic Party and voters were done with Biden and “wanted to move on,” but some of the president’s closest aides worked tirelessly to ensure he stayed on the ticket.

“They sort of, like, pushed him through, pushed him through. And then after the debate, even as there was a clamoring by senators, members of Congress, you know, everyone sort of under the sun, that it was time to go, there was a fierce effort by some of Biden’s top aides, Steve Ricchetti, Michael Donilon and others, to keep the pollsters from meeting with him, to keep campaign staff from meeting with him, to keep a lot of the data information that they were getting from him,” he said. 

“It was, it was a pretty aggressive insularity there that’s sort of hard to describe,” Dawsey added.

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Dawsey alleged that some of Biden’s senior aides were unable to meet with the president to express their concerns. (AP/Susan Walsh)

Hunt questioned Dawsey about a section of his book where he describes that in the fall of 2023, some of Biden’s closest aides were unable to meet with the president to discuss “the peril of his candidacy.”

“Well, a lot of what happened there was that in that period of time, that was when the attack with Hamas happened, right? And there was talk in 2023 after his interview with [Special Counsel] Robert Hur that obviously did not go well,” he noted. “They were under some delusions that it wasn’t that awful, but it did not go well.”

Dawsey added that the Biden campaign was struggling to get donors and fundraisers on board, and that “the numbers were really bad.”

“There was a conversation about whether or not they should ask the president, ‘Do you really want to do this? Do you really want to spend four more years doing this?’ And then the attack with Hamas happens, and they sort of never bring that conversation up to him,” he stated.

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According to Dawsey, Biden’s campaign had a hard time securing donations following his disastrous interview with Robert Hur in 2023. (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

When asked who specifically was trying to meet with the president but couldn’t, Dawsey told Hunt that there was a “core group” of people who had concerns but couldn’t voice them directly to Biden, including his former senior advisor Anita Dunn.

“There were other aides on the campaign side that were really concerned. I think Donilon and Ricchetti were the only ones, to the best of our knowledge, of senior folks who were really bought in on a second term and wanted to keep it going no matter what,” he detailed. “And probably Anthony Bernal, I would also put in that category, and obviously the first lady.”

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Representatives for Joe Biden, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn and Anthony Bernal did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.