In sharp contrast to the ‘good guy’ persona he presents to the public, President Joe Biden reportedly frequently yells obscenities at his aides.
Don’t fking bullsht me! and “God dammit, how the fk don’t you know this!” are just a few of Biden’s exclamations. and, as current and former aides told Axios on Monday, “Get the f*k out of here!”
Whether they are senior or junior staff, “no one is safe,” an administration official told the news organisation.
Biden has ‘such a quick-trigger temper’ when behind closed doors that some aides have brought a colleague to meet with him to try to avoid being scolded alone, according to Axios.
The president’s temper reportedly takes the form of angry interrogations of his aides, instead of erratic tantrums.
Biden engages in what some staff refer to as ‘stump the chump’ or ‘stump the dummy’, in which he grills them on matters they obviously do not know the answers to, Axios reported.
Some aides apparently consider getting yelled at by Biden as an initiation ceremony and believe that the president does not respect them if he doesn’t do so.
Chris Whipple, the author of The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House published in January, wrote that ‘there’s no question that the Biden temper is for real’ though ‘it may not be as volcanic as (former President) Bill Clinton’s’.
Whipple’s book quotes ex-White House press secretary Jen Psaki 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.”‘
But some administration officials have defended Biden as being a strong, policy-minded executive.
‘If there is something that’s not in the brief, he’s going to find it,’ Biden’s longtime chief of staff Teed Kaufman told Axios.
‘It’s not to embarrass people, it’s because he wants to get to the right decision. Most people who have worked for him like the fact that he challenges them and gets them to a better decision.’
Some aides have reportedly called ‘speaking Biden’ a skill involving maneuvering his moodiness and anticipating what he will request.
Still, other aides ‘think the president would be better off occasionally displaying his temper in public as a way to assuage voter concerns that the 80-year-old president is disengaged and too old for the office’, Axios wrote.
The White House did not comment on the report.
Biden’s reported behavior in private goes against the cool and casual persona he conveys wearing Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses and openly admitting his love for ice cream.
The 46th president is not the only commander-in-chief who has been said to have a temper.
Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump allegedly lunged at a Secret Service agent who refused to take him to the US Capitol on January 6 due to the insurrection and screamed, ‘I’m the f**king President. Take me up to the Capitol now.’