WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Why Nobody Misses Joe Biden

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Joe Biden has exited public life—and Americans don’t seem to care. In a new article, Alex Rosado asks the burning question: Where did Joe Biden go? And he explains why voters moved on so quickly.Alex Rosado, a Young Voices Contributor and foreign policy analyst at the Alexander Hamilton Society, argues in his latest op-ed that Biden’s presidency ended not with a dramatic legacy, but with a quiet, unpopular fade into irrelevance. He joins WRFH to discuss.

Hello and welcome. This is WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Malia Tibido, here today with Alex Rosado, a foreign policy analyst at the Alexander Hamilton Society and Young Voices contributor, who recently authored an op-ed in the political insider titled Where Did Joe Biden Go? Hi, Alex. Welcome to the radio station. Thank you so much for having me. It's lovely to have you. So where did Joe Biden go? Well, quite literally back home to Delaware, but away from the public eye in medicine. senses. And a couple of weeks ago, you saw his first public appearance at a play for Shakespeare in New York City, but other than that, he is maintained a very low profile, especially one for a post-presidency, and especially one that was so consequential as well, and consequential not necessarily in the best of terms. As you saw for the last four years, you've had economic crisis after crisis, whether it be

with inflation or gasoline prices or even most recently with the prices of eggs, you saw chaos at the southern border with a lot of illegal aliens coming over into the country and a lot of drug flow as well. And you also saw some embarrassment abroad, whether it be with Afghanistan or with the Israel Palestine conflict. So on many occasions, you don't have to blame Joe Biden for slinking out and disappearing. But it was one that was done deliberately for the past couple of months. How did this come to your attention? Like you said, many people just kind of moved on very quickly. How did you go, oh, wait, where's Joe Biden? Well, it's kind of the. aha moment that you have to step back and say for the last four years you've had a president that

within the media sphere itself didn't really do that well. And you knew Joe Biden was president not because of his lack of media attention. But when he got on the media, you knew he was there. Whether it be tripping over and falling at Joint Base Andrews or even he was riding a bicycle. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fragility, the character of the president himself. He was about 81 years old at the end of his term. And a lot of people did. see that he was up to the task when he announced originally that he wanted to run for a second term. In fact, you had people who were saying that only about 37 percent of them total approved of Joe Biden. And in one presidential primary, when he did try and stake a re-election campaign,

they chose a businessman from Maryland that not many people have heard of and upset Joe Biden in the American Samoa. So there is a lot of different factors at play. But overall, it went to Joe Biden's a popularity. And to see him go off into the sunset, I think a lot of people welcomed that, but not a lot of people noticed it because they just expected it to happen naturally. Yeah. So talking about Joe Biden's unpopularity, I think you saw a lot in the mainstream media defending his mental fortitude, especially before the June 2024 debate. Can you comment on how quickly the Democrat Party turned on Biden? It was a slow burn at that, and there was a fantastic book that just got released and is timely as well. It's called Fight. This was just a

just released by Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes. And it was an inside story about the battle for the White House and who actually gets to control the policy, as well as also who gets to represent America on the largest of stages. And you saw that from the reviewing of this book, you saw that Barack Obama, who was Joe Biden's best friend and president at one time because Joe Biden was his VP, slowly turn on him, even calling him and saying, are you up to the task? You had his closest advisors and even some national security officials like Jake Sullivan go up on stage and say that he is the mental acuity. He has the stamina fit for a president and a presidential nominee once again. But the inside stories from their staffers tell that he had to close up shop basically at around 5 p.m.

In terms of scheduling meetings and making media appearances, he had to have some of his information a lot more digestible. You even saw that with some of the note cards that he had. when he was reading out, calling out people from the press pool, playing it safe, playing it friendly. And you even saw that he was forgetting the names of Congresspeople, even some deceased ones like Jackie Rolorski, unfortunately. You saw him call President Zelensky of Ukraine, President Putin at one point, even saying Vice President Trump in reference to Kamala Harris. So there's just a lot of little things that pile up and people start to wonder and ask questions. You weren't allowed to do that for the first three years. But when it came to that final year, everybody just let the damn break loose.

And after that, there was no going back. Yeah, why do you think people hung on so much? Well, I think it's because of the incumbency effect. And no matter who the president is, it is more so about support of the party. And you saw some Democratic initiatives pass within the presidency of Biden, specifically at the state-life level. Even in Ohio, you saw that an abortion rights case was passed and codified into law. And you saw some other high-profile races, such as the one in Wisconsin, not the one that

happened in 2025, but the one that happened in 2023. Liberals retained their majority on that as well. So people were highly keen to the idea of democratic policies. It just happened to be that the person at the top of the ticket and representing the entire nation wasn't the best deemed for it. So that's why Dean Phillips, a representative from Minnesota, decided to throw his hat into the ring, challenged Joe Biden, say we need a new generation of presidential leadership, and one that can actually form and get things done, as opposed to 9% inflation that happened under Joe Biden, as opposed to 13 U.S. service members, unfortunately, passing away in the chaos that was the Afghanistan withdrawal. And so it just wasn't good for a lot of the country in terms of seeing

these embarrassing, I would say, events and occurrences happen, not only on the world stage, but on the domestic stage as well. And that's why people started gravitate towards Donald Trump as well. They had nostalgia for his administration. They saw that it was effective leadership, no matter if you agreed or disagreed with it. And they said, maybe we should give them a second chance. And that's exactly what voters did. When you talked about how the congressperson from Minnesota was saying that we need a new generation who can really get things done, the Democratic Party picked Kamala Harris. Why do you think Harris lost? Well, one for many reasons. It was that it was attributed a lot to not so much of her policies, but she really banked on vibes. And unfortunately,

you can't do that if you want to be a serious presidential contender. You can't feed off the energy and the public discourse and just kind of assume that you're going to win. And that's exactly what the campaign strategy was. It was let the online machine full of Jen Ziers try and do a lot of of the public relations aspects that presidential campaigns should be able to do. And Kamala Harris, in that regard, played it very safe when going on to media. She barely showed her face on opposing networks. She did one interview with Brett Baer. And at the end of it, it was revealed later on that she went up to Brett Baer and said,

I'm going to win this thing. Well, that's a little bit cocky, don't you think? There's no such thing as a safe victory, especially within politics. And when it came to the actual policy aspects of Kamala Harris herself, she went on the view and she said, I wouldn't have done anything differently than what Joe Biden did. So that right there was a tether. You had the chance to differentiate yourself to bring what Dean Phillips proposes a new generation of democratic leadership, new ideals, breathing new life into the party. But instead of that, they ultimately chose to be a continuation of the failing policies that didn't best serve Americans. And because of that, a lot of people didn't really associate Kamala Harris with anything different. She was just an extension of Joe Biden.

And because of that, she ultimately failed and Donald Trump won. Yeah. So according to the Gallup poll, you just cited, only 37% of people view Biden's presidency favorably. And as you pointed out in your article, the lowest of the five living presidents. Why do you think Biden is the most unpopular living president? Is it a particular political stance he's taken or is it more to do with his age and competency? I think it's a mix of a lot of different factors and especially one just being a temporal aspect of he's the one that we most recognize because his presidency was so recent. And it's difficult for people to evaluate the presidency of Bill Clinton and even George W. Bush.

because that was about 20 years ago now. When you have freshness in your mind, you're able to remember the details and personal strife that you face because of it a lot more. And that's why people had the affiliation and also yearning for a Trump administration once again because they saw that under Donald Trump, you had very low unemployment, about 3.5%.

You had 401K and take-home pay rise through the roof. You didn't have a lot of these economic instabilities like you had with Joe Biden. Under Joe Biden, you saw that the publicly held debt increased by about 27%. You saw that the trade deficit for goods and services grew by about 19%. That means that everything is going to be more expensive at home. People sure felt that. So they said, maybe we shouldn't do that again. Maybe we should try and do something else. Let's go back to what worked beforehand. And you're seeing that now with the Trump administration of droves. Do you think people now are beginning to regret their decisions with the Trump?

Trump tariffs? It's interesting because it is a very short-term effect that we are analyzing right now. And of course, markets even out just with time. But in regards to the consistent economic policy of tariffs themselves, yes, this was pioneered by the first Trump administration. And that happened to come through the phase one agreement and other means. But you saw that Joe Biden and his U.S. trade representative, Catherine Tai, they said these tariffs are going to be in place because we need a mechanism to hold China somewhat accountable. And they said, as long as China doesn't come to the table, and as long as China keeps exploiting these trade terms, and especially trying to get a regime and environment that is more favorable to them, we're not going to let up. So you're seeing that with the second Trump

administration right now, I mean, especially with the stock market, it is inherently volatile when you enact widespread tariffs, especially within the short term, because markets don't know how to react. even consumer products and services, if you take a look at the video game industry, which is absolutely massive, you're seeing Nintendo go now and saying, well, we have a new console on the way in about two months. We're going to withdraw our pre-orders just because we don't know what the pricing effects of this are going to be. Maybe we'll have to raise them. Maybe consumers will have to give a little bit more to increase the services and products that they desire. But it really is too, it's too early to tell. And I think especially having a frame of reference for all of this, you're going to have to see how it plays out in the long term and not just assess the impact of a certain policy just based on what's happening on a day-by-day basis. This is WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Malia Tivito with Alex Rosado, a foreign policy analyst for Alexander Hamilton Society, and a Young Voices contributor who recently wrote the article, Where Did Joe Biden Go?

So to get back onto the topic of Joe Biden and his career, where it really ended. I guess I would say the end point would be the June 24 presidential debate. Could you break down, just bring back to our memory, Biden's performance and how that led to the Democrat Party basically disavowing him as a presidential candidate? Certainly. So it was in one way or another very sobering people and especially Republicans leading up to the debate, thought that they were going to have Joe Biden be on some sort of performance

altering substances beforehand. And of course, that was an unchecked theory. And now that you saw what happened in that June 24th debate, Joe Biden came out in his raw form. And I think in a way it showed confidence in the way that the Democrats tried to portray him saying that he wouldn't be that bad mentally. But in fact, it was one that you kind of felt sorry for him in the sense that he went up there and he stumbled after policy after policy. He said he finally beat Medicare. And even Trump in response to one of Biden's ramblings during the debate, he said, I don't know what he said. I don't think he know what he said either. And that really shifted the paradigm in terms of how we look at mental incognitive health and especially the character of the presidency. I mean, even going back to

some of our founding documents with the Federalist, Federalist 70 says that you need an active and robust executive. And you saw this not with Joe Biden, and you saw the antithesis of it. It was one that couldn't even do dispatch. It wasn't one that it could operate secretively. All of the secrets were out in the open, and now you saw it for yourselves. So it really made us backtrack on the last three years and say, what have we been told? What have we believing? And what have we yet to see? So it sowed a lot of doubt within it as well, and especially even seeing his own Department of Justice, the her report, call him an elderly man with a poor memory. Well, everybody saw that for themselves, live on camera in front of millions and millions of Americans. Yeah. How did Biden's presidency

affect how people perceive the office of presidents? It showed that the presidency needs to be transparent, more than anything else. And I think especially with what you saw with Joe Biden, is there were a lot of kind of backroom murmurings that were going around that the public didn't really know about unless, one, it got leaked in the media, or two, someone just happened to see it while doing a tour of the White House. I mean, you rarely saw Joe Biden give press conferences. You rarely saw him go out and do media appearances, address public questions. When he did, there was a curated press pool, and he played it to a very friendly crowd. So especially when you close off that opposition and when other people, you're going to be a very friendly crowd. and when other people theorize about what might be happening and shrugging it off and saying,

no, of course not. That's not happening. But the fact it actually is, there's a perceived lack of trust within the presidency, the executive branch, and that spans to government as well. For many other reasons, you see Congress now in an 18% approval rating, and part of it is because, well, they're not open and transparent with what they do. You saw that happen with Joe Biden. And again, with that Gallup poll, about 37% approved of his amendment.

You saw also, again, with that other poll, saying that he's the least favorable president that is still with us today. And all of that has to do with Joe Biden didn't give the public exactly what they were looking for. And even in spite of that, exactly what they needed to see. You mentioned Congress and executive transparency. From what I've heard a lot nowadays, politicians play to the camera a lot because things are so publicized. Do you think that there's a balance between publicizing policy with the recorded Senate meetings with the press meetings and such, and national security, privacy with national security? Well, I think so, and especially with the public relations aspect that has taken over a lot of Congress.

If you ask folks, whether it be fellow students or even just everyday Americans, how they consume their news, a vast majority of them are going to say, I get it from online. Most people don't read newspapers anymore. That's just unfortunately the way that the trend is. And I believe about only about maybe 13% or so read newspapers and get political information from there. A lot of it happens to be on Twitter. A lot of it happens to be with on Instagram, especially within Generation Z.

You're getting a lot of people now consuming it from TikTok. And it is becoming now a virtual public space where not only you can consume and absorb news, but you can also act with legislators on there as well. They have their own communication specialists and PR teams and whatnot that dispatch things in a rapid response. But it's also made for a sense of, is this actually the representative or senator talking? Or is this someone that's just hired by them playing the part? Now, sometimes you get people like Chuck Grassley, who's about 89 or so writing his own tweets, and that's very much evident. So it is him doing it. But then also you have some folks that have these specialized teams that are able to craft a narrative

based on what happened to suit their own political preferences. So in that regard, it's very efficient for them. For the public, it morphs their perception of what actually happens with Congress, with the presidency, and every other part of politics. So truly, if you want to get down to it, it is a holistic education that's needed. You have to absorb all the viewpoints, the ones that you agree with, the ones you don't, the ones that you may not know enough about, and the ones that you're already familiar with. So that way you can get through a lot of the bias and sort of shifting and framing of narratives and get down exactly to what politics is supposed to be about. It's about policy. It's not about perception. It's not about spin. It's about what's happening, what you think of it,

and what you can do to change it in the future. What would you say were the high points of Biden's presidency? Say January 20th, 2025. But in a more realistic, sense, I think what really needed to be done was that he showed and Joe Biden showed us the way that the presidency could go about secretively. And that don't mean that in a good light. I don't mean it in a bad light. It just shows that sometimes you can forget who the president is all together. And especially you've seen that with this post-presidency, just being out of the spotlight by any means necessary. But even when he was president, you felt the wrath of his policies, but you didn't really know that he was there to do it. And a lot of speculation, and this is even highlighted within

fight, that a lot of the staffers took the mantle of the presidency and started dispatching different objectives amongst one another. You saw a report by the Heritage Foundation and their oversight project saying that Biden may have used an auto pen signature for a lot of different executive orders, and even some of those last-minute clemency pardons that you saw that absolved him, his family, and members of the January 6th committee of any wrongdoing. So that is called into question, who's really calling the shots? And it makes the presidency so much more complex than people think, because when most people assume the executive branch, they think of the president, the vice president, they have a couple of advisors, and then some intergovernmental agencies here and there. It is actually

a swarth and a vast network of individuals that are all towards one policy goal or political goal. Those are two very different things. And you saw that with Biden, it was a political goal that they were after, all trying to maintain the image that everything was fine. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, there were cracks that you could see from a mile away. Why do you think it was so easy for him to step away from the spotlight so quickly? Well, I think it's for multiple reasons. One is the unpopularity to which we talked about beforehand. And that goes back to his lackluster performance on screen in the media on the debate stage. But it's also confounded by the Trump administration's popularity thus far. And you saw a survey that came out by Harvard back in February saying that 58% of voters feel that Trump is doing a better job than Biden. You saw that Trump. Trump had a 52% approval rating within that poll as well. You also saw that with the initial efforts of Doge uncovering a lot of government waste, a lot of government kind of negligence when it comes to

fiscal responsibility, which a lot of conservatives care about. They care about fiscal conservatism and making sure that the budget, one, is balanced, and two, we reduce the national debt. Doge discovered a lot of things that were contrary to that. So for that to finally have some transparency and see the public light, then a lot to a lot of people and confirm. some of their superstitions already. You saw that there was a flurry of executive orders that came out, whether it be protecting free speech or withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord or even a brand new energy one that is being signed momentarily. You saw that this is in line with what Federalist 70 is about, about having energy in dispatch and making sure that the presidency is one that is

finally attuned to world events and can overall actually function. And you see that even pollsters are arguing, even on CNN, that Americans love Trump's pace of change. So he brought back a lot of purpose and function to it that waned under Joe Biden. Even what some polls that are being conducted, I believe this was one from Overton as well, most recently that you saw with the question of who was to blame for the current economic state when it comes to inflation. Most people still blame Joe Biden for it. So people haven't forgotten about him and his policies. They've forgotten more about the person that Joe Biden was. And they were more than happy to cast that to the wayside. Well, this has been a wonderful conversation with you, Alex. Before we end, where can people

follow you and your work? You can follow me on Twitter slash X at Alex P. Rosada. Thank you all for listening. This has been Malia Tibido on WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.