According to a new book coming out next month, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi believes that Barack Obama is “jealous” of Joe Biden.
The book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, written by New York Times reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, insists that Obama has “complicated” feelings about his former number two.
“Nancy Pelosi, who spoke regularly with the former president, came away from her conversations with Obama during this period with a matter-of-fact diagnosis. She told a friend: ‘Obama is jealous of Biden,’” the book claims.
It’s an amusing allegation, to say the least, especially so soon after Barack Obama was given a rock-star welcome during his recent return to the White House while Biden was treated like a ripe number two on the floor of a gas station bathroom. I doubt Obama has any feelings of jealousy towards Biden.
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The book also claims that Joe Biden told one of his advisers that Obama thinks Biden is treated better by the media than he was and that Obama isn’t happy about that. “I am confident that Barack is not happy with the coverage of this administration as more transformative than his,” Biden is alleged to have said.
Honestly, I don’t think Obama is jealous at all. He certainly has no reason to be jealous. Let’s not forget the mainstream media’s loyalty to him throughout his presidency, defending his poor economic record and even defending him in the wake of the Benghazi terror attack. The same media was surprisingly critical of Biden after his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and mocked his efforts to blame Putin for inflation and high gas prices. Overall, yes, the mainstream media loves Biden, but Biden could only dream of having the same media coverage that Obama enjoyed for being the First Black President™.
As for which man was more transformative, I think it’s safe to say that even Obama recognizes that most of what Biden has accomplished is undoing Trump-era policies and restoring the Obama-era status quo. But Biden’s Build Back Better plan hasn’t been passed. Nor have Democrats’ efforts to overhaul elections.
Does Biden think (or at least want to believe) that he’s a more transformative president? I don’t doubt that. But, comparatively speaking, Obama is a giant compared to Joe Biden, and Biden is still standing on Obama’s shoulders, having yet to make his own mark.
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