Biden family insider exposes culture of concealment in former administration
"This was a group in the White House who were allergic to transparency, and I'm talking about just in the East Wing," he said. "The very first day walking into the White House, the usher was fired, and I couldn't get reporters straight answers, because nobody would give me straight answers."
Biden Insider Exposes How White House 'Gaslit' The Public About Former President's Decline
LaRosa, who served as press secretary for former First Lady Jill Biden from 2021 to 2022, noted that his comments were not intended to suggest whether Biden was fit or unfit for office, as audio obtained by Fox News captures the former president appearing to struggle to remember key details while being pressed on his handling of classified documents.
"What I am suggesting… [is] it was not intuitive… it was not their style to be transparent about anything. They took days and months to be deliberative, and I'm talking about the small things, about when the dog bites occurred," he said, referencing the former first family's dog, Major, who had reportedly bitten multiple people.
Biden's Team Hid The Truth About His Health All Along: Wh Press Sec
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"Or about the wedding with the grandkids," he continued. "They got caught lying to the press about press coverage, because they were so scared to be transparent about anything."
"I said to myself at some point, 'If it's this hard to get them to just be transparent and disclose things and to just be upfront from the beginning about anything, even the small things… My God, what would happen if there were big things?'"
Still, LaRosa said that, even if tapes revealing Biden's cognitive struggles had come forward sooner, it likely wouldn't have been enough for him to have been forced out of the 2024 race earlier.Original article source: Biden family insider exposes culture of concealment in former administration
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Presented by With help from Eli Okun, Bethany Irvine and Ali Bianco Good Sunday morning. It's Zack Stanton. Get in touch. THE CONVERSATION: Within days of her election in November, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), faced backlash from some House Republicans for being transgender. In the face of those attacks, McBride has sought ways to forge ties across the aisle, animated partly by her hope of bringing 'a sense of kindness and grace' to Congress despite the 'reality TV show nature' of today's politics, she tells Playbook's Dasha Burns on today's episode of 'The Conversation.' Listen in: The two also discuss the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, how the Democratic Party can rebuild its coalition without 'reinforcing right-wing framing' over 'culture war' issues and why her pursuit of bipartisan legislation is in part a direct response to President Donald Trump. Watch the full episode … Subscribe to 'The Conversation' on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify DRIVING THE DAY WELCOME TO THE VIBE SHIFT: For months, Trump has boasted that under his leadership, America is the 'hottest' country in the world. (He repeated that claim overnight in a social media post at 1:49 a.m.) Now, he's at risk of being burned by those expectations. On Wednesday, new GDP numbers showed that in the first half of the year, the economy grew at an annual rate of less than 1.3 percent. On Thursday, new inflation numbers showed that the personal consumption expenditures price index jumped by 2.6 percent in the year ending in June — an acceleration of the inflation rate from April. On Friday, the new jobs report showed that net hiring has 'plummeted over the past three months with job gains of just 73,000 in July, 14,000 in June and 19,000 in May,' in the words of the AP. And behind those topline numbers was a striking datapoint, the WSJ's Te-Ping Chen and Harriet Torry note: 'The number of people unemployed for at least 27 weeks topped 1.8 million, the highest level since 2017, not counting the pandemic's unemployment surge.' This morning, it's clear that a new consensus is emerging: For all the talk of a new 'Golden Age,' there are abundant signs that the economy, while at times glittering, may not be gold. Simply put: 'Job gains are dwindling. Inflation is ticking upward. Growth has slowed compared with last year,' AP's Josh Boak and Christopher Rugaber write. '[T]his is not the boom the Republican president promised, and his ability to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for any economic challenges has faded as the world economy hangs on his every word and social media post.' Indeed, nearly 200 days into his second term, even members of Trump's administration are signaling that the window during which Biden could be blamed has now passed. 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Radio host Charlamagne Tha God threw some cold water on the idea of former Vice President Kamala Harris running for president in 2028, and urged the Democratic Party to throw the old regime "under the bus." "I don't personally know if I would run for president, if I was her, and, if she does, she has to get a real connection with the people. I think that's something that she's always been missing," he said during Fox News' "My View." Charlamagne sat for an exclusive interview with Fox News host Lara Trump on Saturday, days after Harris revealed she would not be running to be California's next governor. "If you look at from 2020 to now, whenever you see her, it always seems like it's transactional, right? Like she ran for president. So she was trying to get people's attention for that. Then she became vice president, then she became the actual nominee. People have never seen the VP just out having a conversation, doing what she says she wants to do right there, which is just being of service to the people in that way. I think she just needs to establish a real connection with the people," the radio host continued. Charlamagne told the Democratic Party to throw the old regime "completely under the bus." "Whoever is going to be leading the party moving forward, whoever says that they're going to be the face of the party, moving forward. You got to be willing to throw that old regime we just saw under the bus," he said, before pointing to CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson's book, "Original Sin," and calling out the Biden administration. "So when a lie of that magnitude is told and not just a lie that we all read about, a lie that we saw with our own ears and heard with our own eyes. And then President Biden dropped out when it was way too late. When you see that happen, you've got to be willing to throw that old regime completely under the bus and say, 'Hey, I am presenting something totally new,'" he continued. He also suggested that Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart run on the Democratic ticket in 2028. "I would love to see Jon Stewart run in 2028. If we're talking about like a change agent coming from the outside, that's really going to shake things up and somebody that I feel like can speak to, you know, all people, plus we actually, he's a celebrity who actually knows what they're talking about, we've seen him get legislation and stuff passed before, like, we know where his heart is, he'd be somebody I'd like to see really get in the race and disrupt things in 2028," he said. Charlamagne then added, "maybe a Jon Stewart-Colbert ticket, because, you know, Colbert's not going to have a job." The liberal radio host also suggested the nominee would be a Democratic governor, pointing to Gov. Josh Shapiro, D-Pa., and Gov. Wes Moore, D-Md. During Charlamagne's radio show this week, he suggested Harris could be a leader of the Democratic Party, but said he wasn't sure about her running again. "I don't know if she should run again, but I definitely would like to see her write a book. I definitely would like to, you know, see her start a podcast and just build a real connection with people, you know, and she is - I mean relatively young," Charlamagne said. "I just don't know what's going to happen in 2028, man. I just think Democrats suck so bad. I don't - I don't know."
