OBAMA: ‘Don’t Underestimate Joe’s Ability to F*** Things Up’

Barack Obama has never been a huge fan of Joe Biden — and that’s from his own words.
Obama didn’t endorse his 77-year-old former vice president in his race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination for months, even though politicians across the board endorsed their chosen candidates. And at one point, Obama said he didn’t think Biden has “it” — the essential “bond” with the electorate that Obama once had.
Now comes a new report by Politico, a liberal website founded by two former Washington Post reporters, that says Obama thinks Biden will “f*** things up.”
“One Democrat who spoke to Obama recalled the former president warning, ‘Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up,’” Politico reported. “Speaking of his own waning understanding of today’s Democratic electorate, especially in Iowa, Obama told one 2020 candidate: ‘And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.’”
Politico also said Obama and Biden had a relationship “built particularly around devotion to family, while at the same time many senior aides, sometimes tacitly encouraged by the president’s behavior, dismissed Biden as eccentric and a practitioner of an old, outmoded style of politics.”
In April, when Biden announced he would be running for the Democratic nomination, Obama issued a statement through spokeswoman Katie Hill.
“President Obama has long said that selecting Joe Biden as his running mate in 2008 was one of the best decisions he ever made. He relied on the Vice President’s knowledge, insight, and judgment throughout both campaigns and the entire presidency. The two forged a special bond over the last 10 years and remain close today,” the statement said.
The statement was notably lacking a formal endorsement.
Biden, though, said he had personally asked Obama not to issue an endorsement. “I asked President Obama not to endorse, and he doesn’t want to. Listen, we should — whoever wins this nomination should win it on their own merits,” he said when asked by reporters why Obama had not endorsed him.
The New York Times also reported that Obama quietly urged Biden not to run. “The two men spoke at least a half dozen times before Mr. Biden decided to run, and Mr. Obama took pains to cast his doubts about the campaign in personal terms,” The  Times wrote in a piece headlined “Obama’s and Biden’s Relationship Looks Rosy. It Wasn’t Always That Simple.”

“‘You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t,’ Mr. Obama told Mr. Biden earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the exchange.”
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