Joe Biden's own campaign staff just used one word to describe the America he built.
Now his family is touring the country demanding credit for it.
And the word they used is going to end that tour before it starts.
Biden's Inner Circle Turns on Him
A former Biden campaign staffer told New York Magazine exactly what they think of the man they worked for.
"I think it is very hard to ever get over the fact that he is responsible for the hellscape that we live in now," the staffer said.
That's not Tucker Carlson.
That's not a Trump campaign ad.
That's a Democrat – someone who knocked on doors for Biden – calling his presidency a hellscape.
The staffer didn't stop there.
"It is undeniable that his hubris cost us," they said.
https://twitter.com/KyleMazzaWUNF/status/2065930104878874720?s=20
Hubris.
The word historians use for leaders who believed their own mythology until reality collapsed around them.
Biden believed he could win again.
His family pushed him forward anyway.
Jill Biden sat across from every aide who raised concerns, watched her husband lose his train of thought mid-sentence, and told America he was sharp as a tack.
Now she has a memoir out.
David Axelrod and Tommy Vietor Finish the Job
While Biden is showing up at a Best Western in South Dakota and losing his train of thought in front of 1,200 Democrats, the people who built Obama's coalition are telling him to go home.
David Axelrod – Obama's chief strategist – was blunt.
"Putting him front and center will remind people why he was forced to leave the stage," Axelrod told New York Magazine.
He's been saying this for years.
Back in late 2023, Axelrod publicly warned that Biden's poll numbers would "send tremors of doubt" through the Democratic Party and urged him to reconsider running.
Biden ignored him.
Then former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said the thing nobody in the Democratic Party has been willing to say out loud.
"Joe Biden is only a victim of what others did to him," Vietor said.
"He never views the country as the victim of what he did to us."
Read that twice.
A man who worked for Barack Obama just told the world that Biden looks at a broken border, record inflation, and an humiliated military and sees himself as the one who got hurt.
The Cover-Up Was the Crime
Here's what fires me up.
Biden's team didn't just make a bad call in 2024.
They ran a years-long cover-up against the American people.
David Plouffe – Harris's own campaign manager – said Biden "totally f—ed us" and turned her campaign into "a f—ing nightmare."
A senior White House aide told authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that staffers "attempted to shield him from his own staff so many people didn't realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023."
They hid a sitting president's collapse from the people who worked ten feet away from him.
Jill Biden hosted fundraisers.
Hunter Biden gave interviews saying Democrats "never truly understood" his father.
And now Rufus Gifford – the man who ran Biden's campaign finances and now chairs his presidential library board – is telling New York Magazine there's "less of a hangover" and "more of a nostalgia for normal times."
Normal times.
Historic inflation was normal.
A president who couldn't finish a sentence was normal.
They looked you in the eye for three years and told you the most powerful man in the world was fine.
He wasn't fine.
They knew he wasn't fine.
And now the woman who knew it most – who sat across from every doctor, every aide, every warning sign – is on a book tour asking for your sympathy.
That's not a legacy.
That's a confession.
Sources:
- CJ Womack, "Ex-Biden Staffer Blames Biden's 'Hubris' for the 'Hellscape That We Live In,'" Fox News, June 14, 2026.
- Staff, "Plouffe Blames Biden for 'F—ing Nightmare' Harris Campaign," Fox News, May 2025.
- Staff, "Biden Made Harris Campaign a 'Nightmare,' Destroyed Her Chances by Staying in 2024 Race Too Long, Aides Charge," Fox News, May 2025.
- Staff, "Former Obama Adviser Axelrod Says Biden Should Consider Dropping Out of 2024," Fox News/Yahoo News, November 2023.
- Staff, "Democrats Grapple With Biden's Reemergence," ABC News, May 9, 2025.