In public, President Biden likes to whisper to make a point. In private, he’s prone to yelling, Axios reported.
Behind closed doors, Biden has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him. Some take a colleague, almost as a shield against a solo blast.
The president’s admonitions include: “God dammit, how the f**k don’t you know this?!,” “Don’t f**king bullsh*t me!” and “Get the f**k out of here!” — according to current and former Biden aides who have witnessed and been on the receiving end of such outbursts.
The private eruptions paint a more complicated picture of Biden as a manager and president than his carefully cultivated image as a kindly uncle who loves Aviator sunglasses and ice cream.
Senior and lower-level aides alike can be in Biden’s line of fire. “No one is safe,” said one administration official.
Biden aides still talk about how angry he got at Jeff Zients, then the administration’s “COVID czar,” in late 2021 when there was a shortage of testing kits as the Omicron variant spread.
A spokesperson for Zients told Axios: “I’m not going to speak to what internal convos may or may not have happened between Jeff and the president.”
“There’s no question that the Biden temper is for real. It may not be as volcanic as Bill Clinton’s, but it’s definitely there,” said Chris Whipple, author of “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House.”
Whipple’s book quotes former White House press secretary Jen Psaki as saying: “I said to [Biden] multiple times, ‘I’ll know we have a really good, trusting relationship when you yell at me the first time.'”
Whipple notes: “Psaki wouldn’t have to wait long.”
Being yelled at by the president has become an internal initiation ceremony in this White House, aides say — if Biden doesn’t yell at you, it could be a sign he doesn’t respect you.
In January 2022, he was caught on a hot mic calling Fox News’ Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch.”
Jeff Connaughton, a former Biden campaign and Senate aide who was chief of staff to Kaufman when he filled Biden’s seat in the Senate, wrote about Biden’s temper in his 2012 book on Washington corruption, “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Wins.”
Connaughton wrote that as a senator, Biden was an “egomaniacal autocrat … determined to manage his staff through fear.”
He told of a time during the 2008 presidential campaign when a 23-year-old fundraising staffer got into the car with Biden.
“Okay, senator, time to do some fundraising calls,” the aide said. Biden responded by looking at him and snapping: “Get the f**k out of the car.”
Connaughton told Axios that Biden “hides his sharper edge to promote his folksy Uncle Joe image — which is why, when flashes of anger break through, it seems so out of public character.”
