Former president Joe Biden bailed on a meeting with progressive lawmakers at a critical moment in his doomed re-election campaign, according to a new book.
The octogenarian alarmed supporters with his halting performance in the June 27 debate against Donald Trump, and longtime adviser Ron Klain told him the next day that he needed to shore up support from the congressional progressive caucus at a White House meeting – but Biden said he had a photoshoot scheduled with Annie Leibovitz, according to excerpts from a new book published by The Guardian.
“You need to cancel that,” Klain told him, according to Uncharted, by journalist Chris Whipple. “You need to stay in Washington. You need to have an aggressive plan to fight and to rally the troops.”
ALSO READ: 'Came as a surprise to me': Senators 'troubled' by one aspect of government funding bill
Biden seemed to relent, according to the book, but his resolve didn't last.
“That weekend, Biden and his family were at Camp David having their pictures taken," Whipple wrote.
The former president did speak to the progressive lawmakers by Zoom, the book notes, only to scold them over their stance on Israel and boast that he had stronger credentials than them.
“All you guys want to talk about is Gaza," Biden said, according to Whipple. "What would you have me do? I was a progressive before some of you guys were even in Congress.”
Klain, who had been Biden's chief of staff from 2021 to 2023, returned to the former president's side in June to help prepare for the debate, and he reports being alarmed by his physical and mental decline, but he also told Whipple that some Democratic donors were "tired" of his ties to labor and wanted a more business-oriented candidate.
“This was about something other than his age. It was a struggle over power in our party," Klain told the author.
Those calls grew even louder after Biden's alarming debate performance, and Whipple wrote that Klain called the former president the next day and urged him to meet with the progressives.
“Look, we’re hemorrhaging badly. We need to get the progressive caucus to the White House this weekend,'" Klain said, according to Whipple. "'And you need to agree with them on an agenda for a second term, and they will endorse you. So you can walk out there with one hundred members of Congress saying, You should stay in the race.’"
Biden seemed unconvinced, saying he had the photoshoot scheduled that weekend with his family, so he ignored Klain's "blunt" advice and went to Camp David anyway.
“Klain was angry,” Whipple wrote. “He called [Jeff] Zients, his successor as White House chief of staff. The president needed to rally the progressives ASAP, Klain told him. But Zients didn’t share his alarm. ‘Look, we’ve got a plan,’ he told Klain. ‘We’ve got a schedule. We’re going to stick to the schedule.’”
“Jeff, this is life or death for this presidency this weekend," Klain added, according to the book.
