Editor’s note: President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people on federal death row to life in prison.
President Biden is readying to leave the White House with little fanfare.
Democrats are eager to turn the page on a poor year in which they lost again to President-elect Trump, who has swallowed up much of the spotlight well before he’s taken office for a second time.
Biden for his part has embarked on several major foreign trips since the election. He also pardoned his son, is working on reaching a ceasefire deal in Gaza, upping assistance to Ukraine and working the holiday circuit while delivering speeches in and around Washington.
He also made waves just before Christmas by announcing he was commuting the sentences of 37 people serving on federal death row.
But the president’s public presence has hardly registered while Trump’s cascade of announcements for his second Cabinet, a network television interview and his first press conference since winning the election at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida take up much of the media atmosphere.
That’s aside from Trump and his allies injecting themselves into onerous government funding negotiations at the year’s end, in which Biden and the White House were largely silent. That chorus was instead largely led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Republicans said Biden’s absence from major moments is par for the course — in addition to his avoiding the press at almost all costs.
“He’s been disappeared for a long time. We saw him go to Africa, didn’t take any questions that anybody could see and was largely shielded from the press. We know he’s going to go to Italy, presumably, media will have the same amount of access,” GOP strategist Doug Heye said.
Democrats, too, have done little to bolster the leader of their party, instead expressing anticipation for Biden to leave office, even if they don’t like who is coming next.
“There’s just such a great level of sort of disappointment on the way this presidency is ending. It’s almost like a resignation at this point,” a Democratic lobbyist said.
“Among Democrats, nobody’s looking forward to Donald Trump being president, but everybody’s ready for the Biden presidency to be done.”
Jon Favreau, a former President Obama speechwriter, said Trump’s press conference highlighted a notion that Biden was absent from the public stage — despite the fact that Biden himself was delivering a speech at the Labor Department while Trump was announcing a $100 billion investment from SoftBank.
“It was more or less a standard presidential policy announcement, the main difference being: Trump isn’t president yet. A fact that’s getting easier and easier to forget as Joe Biden seems to be disappearing from the public stage as his term comes to an end,” Favreau said on his “Pod Save America” podcast.
Favreau and his co-hosts also noted Trump’s attendance at the Army-Navy game earlier in December, highlighting that Biden had never attended. Trump once again put himself in the media spotlight, in part by the entourage he had, including his embattled Defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth.
Some Democrats said they are unbothered by Trump stealing the spotlight in the final month, noting that he isn’t acting inappropriately and appears more measured than eight years ago.
Others note that Obama stole the media’s attention in 2008 when he was first elected as former President George W. Bush was moving out of the White House.
The fact that Trump is acting like president before he’s officially in office, one longtime Democratic donor and bundler called more of “a media issue” than an actual issue.
“I haven’t seen much of anything that he’s done that’s objectionable. He’s getting people to invest in United States, that’s a good thing. He is meeting with foreign leaders. When other people win elections, they often take calls with foreign leaders. I’m sure the conversations are not too different in person than on the phone,” the source said. “If he acts inappropriately, it would be troublesome but he seems to be more measured than he was eight years ago.”
Democratic supporters are left soured by Biden’s remaining tenure.
“I think people, including probably a lot of people in the White House, are just ready for it to be over. The administration accomplished a lot, but the most important thing was winning and we didn’t win,” added the longtime Democratic donor and bundler.
The White House continues to work behind the scenes on two major foreign fronts when it comes to upping assistance to Ukraine and trying to reach a ceasefire agreement to end the fighting in Gaza.
But Trump again has garnered more attention for some of the meetings he’s having with foreign leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after threatening tariffs all the while joking that he would make Canada the 51st state.
Adam Abrams, a communications official in the Obama White House, argued that Biden can still command attention in the final days of the presidency to define his legacy on his terms if he opts to do so using his bully pulpit.
“President Biden can and will make full use of the bully pulpit to define his historic legacy, detailing all that he’s achieved, the remarkable consistency of his values and breadth of his accomplishments. After all, as the president, he doesn’t need to compete for the media’s, or the public’s attention – he can command it,” said Abrams, a partner at Seven Letter.
“While the frenzy continues with the Trump transition and the year-end funding battle on Capitol Hill, President Biden is actively reinforcing his record by using the final stretch to make progress on his core priorities,” Abrams said.
Biden has commanded such attention — albeit not for the most positive reasons.
He caused an uproar among Democrats again when he announced he would pardon his son Hunter Biden after insisting for months that he wouldn’t do so.
The move left Democrats “disgusted” and “totally” pissed off with Biden World overall, sources told The Hill.
That was on top of the feelings many Democrats already had about Biden, which was that he should have opted not to run for reelection or should have left the 2024 race sooner; Vice President Harris was left with only about 100 days to run against Trump before losing to him decisively.
Democrats had an upsetting year overall, between losing the White House, Senate and not flipping the House.
Ivan Zapien, a former official at the Democratic National Committee, described the end-of-year feeling as less centered on Biden and more about disappointment overall among Democrats.
“Losing is not fun, and I think you are seeing not fun play out across the Democratic Party spectrum,” Zapien said. “I would not call it Biden fatigue — it is more of a, ‘well that sucked, rest up for the following one’ feeling.”
