Former President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 election on July 21, 2024, sending shockwaves through a race already upended by the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in, only to be beaten by Trump. As Democrats try to recover, Biden, suffering from cancer, aims to protect what remains of his legacy. This Washington Examiner series “Dropout,” will look at what happened on that day, the aftermath for Biden, and how Harris’s future is up in the air. Part 2 looks at Biden’s attempts to save his legacy since leaving the White House.
Since leaving the White House, former President Joe Biden‘s attempts to shore up his legacy and defend himself against GOP attacks have been met with a mixed reception.
Biden has largely hit back against reports that he and allies hid his declining mental and physical ailments from the public, reexamined his abrupt exit from the 2024 election, and criticized President Donald Trump‘s second administration.
Biden stepped back into the limelight recently in an interview with the New York Times this month, where he branded Trump and the Republican-led Congress that is investigating his administration’s use of the autopen as “liars.”
“I made every decision,” Biden said when asked about directing staff to use the autopen for clemency actions.
The former president claimed that the autopen was used because of the wide swath of people granted clemency under broad policy categories, such as reducing nonviolent drug offender sentencing, which he approved.
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In other previous remarks this month, Biden also bemoaned the GOP’s effort to undo legislation he signed into law by passing the “big, beautiful bill.”
But whether Biden’s comments are helping his case is unclear.
“I think he needs to defend his honor. I don’t think it’s a good idea that he’s out there every day if that’s going to be the case,” said Steven Maviglio, a Democratic strategist. “Democrats need to look forward, not backward, and it just gives Trump an excuse to look backward.”
Brad Bannon, another Democratic strategist, said of Biden: “It would be better for him to lay low.”
“Giving an interview to the New York Times was a bad idea,” he continued. “Trump baits Biden into these things because he wants Biden to be in the limelight because he is more unpopular than Trump is, and there are very few people who can claim that distinction.”
The Republican backlash to Biden’s comments came quickly. In the days following the New York Times interview, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), the chairman of a Senate investigative subcommittee, told the Washington Examiner he planned to request emails from the Biden administration’s final days in office from the National Archives as part of his investigation into the former president’s decline.
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The White House also announced a major investigation into the use of the autopen in coordination with the Department of Justice and is already reviewing documents that the National Archives has turned over.
“As I’ve said many times from this podium, and the president has said as well, it’s incredibly important that we get to the bottom of who really was at the tip of the spear and the decision-making process here in the White House,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a Thursday press briefing.
“Because former President Biden himself admitted to the New York Times—I understand he never gave interviews when he was here, but now, all of a sudden, he wants to give one—and he said that he did not actually review every single pardon that he signed on his way out the door,” Leavitt continued. “That’s incredibly concerning, and I can tell you, it’s something this president would never tolerate.”
Anthony Bernal, a former aide to former first lady Jill Biden, appeared before the House Oversight Committee’s majority on Wednesday, where he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) has asked several former Biden aides to testify in front of the committee over the autopen use, and alleged cover-up of Biden’s mental decline. Annie Tomasini, who served as assistant and deputy chief of staff to Biden, and Anthony Bernal, a former top aide to former first lady Jill Biden, both appeared in front of the committee this week after being subpoenaed and invoked the Fifth Amendment. Biden’s former White House physician, Kevin O’Connor, also invoked the Fifth Amendment during his appearance.
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The most recent drama over the autopen investigations mirrors a similar scenario that occurred last month.
During a Juneteenth celebration, Biden knocked Trump over his efforts to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
“I played a role in changing the names of all the military camps that have slave names,” Biden said. “What are we doing now? Restating those names. Folks, the darkness can hide much but erase nothing.”
The next day, Trump called for a special prosecutor to investigate Biden over the 2020 election.
“Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD! The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed,” he wrote on Truth Social. “This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin! What this Crooked man, and his CORRUPT CRONIES, have done to our Country in 4 years, is grossly indescribable!”
Kaivan Shroff, a 2024 delegate for former Vice President Kamala Harris and a 2016 Hillary Clinton staffer, defended Biden’s right to speak publicly against reporters and critics who have accused him of hiding his mental decline after exiting the 2024 race.
“In fairness, he did agree to step down and so in some sense he has, I think, every right to do that,” Shroff said.
“I was one of the delegates originally for Biden that then switched to Harris as all that happened,” Shroff added. “And I think even folks that made that decision were pretty resentful at the time of how Biden was treated, both in the party and obviously externally. But I think him responding to these types of stories is expected, and I actually don’t know that it really does much to move the needle.”
Matt Dole, a Republican strategist, said Biden’s more than half-century tenure as a politician likely plays into his desire to establish his credibility on the national stage.
“I understand why he’s attacking Republicans; that’s what he has done for 60 years now,” Dole said. “But he should be mad at the Democratic Party. The Democrats hung him out to dry twice, once by ignoring the problems with Joe Biden and not dealing with it, and then, when they couldn’t ignore it anymore, when not even the national liberal media would cover for them, they hung him out to dry.”
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In May, Biden conducted his first live interview with an American outlet since leaving the White House with the hosts of The View, where he pushed back against claims from journalists accusing his inner circle of shielding him from the public. In particular, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson’s book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again may have been the most damning account against Biden.
“They are wrong. There’s nothing to sustain that, No. 1,” Biden said on the show. “No. 2, you know, think of what we’re left with. We were left with a circumstance where we had an insurrection … not since the Civil War.”
The Democratic Party has remained largely leaderless after Biden’s exit from the 2024 race led to Harris taking the mantle before a devastating loss to Trump in November. The party has not unified on whether it’s better to embrace a centrist position or lean more into progressive policies to push back against the president and win back the American electorate.
But some Democrats were wary of Biden’s comments and called for him to “go away.”
Cayce Myers, a professor at Virginia Tech’s School of Communication, said Biden is in a tough position as Trump and the GOP continue to investigate him.
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“It’s a catch-22 for Biden because if he doesn’t respond or say anything about his legacy, that fuels this narrative about his inability to function and communicate, and it calls into question his cognitive abilities,” Myers said. “On the other hand, it does give fodder for the Republican Party and for President Trump, and they make his statements into political talking points that they can repackage for 2026 and beyond.”
Former President Barack Obama was also met with criticism from Democrats angered over his comments at a New Jersey fundraiser calling for his party members to “toughen up.”
“Are people mad at Obama for speaking up? Yes, some of them are,” Shroff said. “But, you know that always happens.”
“We’re still rehashing Bernie versus Hillary 2016. We’re still rehashing so many things. The idea that the guy who was just president five seconds ago can’t speak up, I think, is a little silly,” he also said.
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Yet, Biden’s attempts to have his perspective be the definitive narrative of his presidency will likely be unsuccessful.
“Ultimately, the historians and the political pundits will define his legacy regardless of what he says,” Myers said. “And presidential legacy is not something that’s an immediate item; it evolves. And sometimes the legacy does not materialize until decades later. And so I think that while it is probably self-fulfilling in some respects to defend his administration, I don’t know, long term, what effect that has, if anything.”