The wild thing is, the Biden audio tapes — the damning, irrefutable proof that the ex-president’s brain had melted — were released late on a Friday evening. In the PR world, that’s exactly when you wanna release negative news, because it blunts the fallout. Ideally, you send out the press release ‘round 5:01 p.m. on a Friday evening… and by the time Monday morning arrives, it’s already old news.
The only thing that could’ve made it better for Biden would’ve been if it were the Friday before Memorial Day (holiday weekends are the best for a bad news dump). He only missed perfection by a week!
So keep in mind this was juuuust about as good as it was gonna get for Biden… and yeah, it wasn’t good at all.
It was a freaking catastrophe.
Interestingly, about a week before the audio tapes were released — and right before Biden’s ill-fated media blitz with the BBC and “The View” — Biden hired a PR expert named Chris Meagher. As Politico reported:
Joe Biden is in reputation management mode, hiring a veteran campaign and communications strategist to help burnish his legacy at a time when many in his party want him to exit the stage.
In a sign of Biden’s intent to remain engaged publicly, his inner circle tapped Chris Meagher, a former Biden deputy press secretary and Defense Department spokesperson, to help him transition past the first 100 days of the Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the hire and granted anonymity to speak freely.
Meagher, who has worked for former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, played an instrumental role in booking Biden’s appearance on The View on Thursday, the people said, his first live interview since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
To my knowledge, Axios reporters Marc Caputo and Alex Thompson haven’t disclosed their source for the Biden tapes. Nobody has said this yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their source was actually Meagher. Look, if Meagher had a heads-up that the Biden tapes were gonna be disseminated prior to Memorial Day no matter what, forwarding ‘em to a pair of political reporters on a Friday evening might’ve been his next best option.
In PR, you don’t always have a choice between something awesome and something crappy. Sometimes, all your options are crappy.
Here’s the audio. Biden struggled to remember when he was elected to office — or even when his own child died:
We’ve reached the point where Biden’s PR goals and the Democratic Party’s PR goals have so thoroughly separated, it’s become an adversarial relationship. (Mostly because Biden forced their hand.) As such, there are now two competing narratives battling for public approval:
Ol’ Joe wants to go down in history as great leader — and one of the most consequential Americans of all time. The way he sees it, he’s the longest-serving politician in D.C. history, he helped get the first black president elected, and then he saved the republic from that dastardly Donald Trump. (Had those “dog-faced pony soldiers” in the DNC supported him, why, he surely would’ve defeated the MAGA Menace in 2024 as well, dagnabbit.)
The DNC can’t sing from that hymn sheet anymore. They need Biden to own his failures and play the part of a sacrificial lamb.
Since the Friday evening news dump, the media drumbeat has steadily escalated. Here’s a portion of the coverage over just the last 24 hours(!):
The Washington Post: For Democrats, there’s no escaping (for now) the Biden hangover from 2024
The Hill: Democrats want Biden to take responsibility for loss to Trump
Bloomberg: Democrats Have Better Issues to Debate Than Biden’s Health
AP News: Biden audio release pressures Democrats who would rather talk about Trump
MSNBC: ‘Where is the accountability?’ How Biden’s baggage is making it harder for Democrats to move forward
The New York Times: ‘Watch Me,’ Biden Said. But Hearing Him in Hur Interview Is More Revealing.
Los Angeles Times: America was gaslit by the arrogance of Joe Biden and his enablers
The Guardian: Original Sin: book on Biden’s health decline reopens Democratic party’s wounds
The Washington Post: Who is to blame for Biden’s gamble to run for president? Only Biden.
The New York Times: Biden Faces Renewed Scrutiny After Release of Special Counsel Audio
Politico: Audio of Hur interview reveals Biden’s apparent memory stumbles, sparking renewed scrutiny
Rolling Stone: Biden’s Decline Was ‘Much Worse Behind the Scenes,’ Per New Book
If Biden’s PR strategy was to dump the tapes on a Friday and talk about something new on Monday — and then, by the time Memorial Day comes and goes, hope it’s long forgotten — that’s not going to work. There’s too much emotion; too many connective parts that are worthy of further scrutiny.
And more importantly, too many Democrats are now incentivized to blast not just Biden to smithereens, but his enablers, too.
We predicted this PR shift on Friday. The first class of Democratic Party activists — the wannabes who’ve gotta claw, beg, and scrap for media attention — have already taken the bait.
The Democrats' D-List: Dudes like Beto O’Rourke:
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said that former President Joe Biden should not have run for re-election in 2024 during an appearance on Pod Save America.
“Just to be clear, Biden should not have run again. And to be even more clear, he failed this country in the most important job that he had,” the former Texas senatorial and gubernatorial candidate said.
O’Rourke, who ran in the Democratic primary alongside Biden in 2020, added that “We might very well lose the greatest country that this world has ever known. And it might be in part because of the decision that Biden and those around him made to run for reelection.” [emphasis added]
After the D-List comes the C-List. It’ll happen super-quickly, too, especially when the lowly O’Rourkes of the world start reaping all the PR benefits.
Believe me, we’ll get to their A-List (such as it is) soon enough!
Joe Biden is caught in a horrible vise, because bashing him — and his enablers — has become a bipartisan issue. The GOP has been saying all this stuff for years; May 2025 is when the Democrats joined the chorus.
Consider the tonal shift in The Hill’s article on Biden’s mental decline:
Democrats are tired of Joe Biden saying he would have won.
What they want, they say, is for the former president to admit to his part in the party’s 2024 loss to Donald Trump.
Democratic strategists, operatives and donors this week in conversations and text exchanges all reiterated the same thing: They want Biden to take responsibility for former Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat to the new president.
They also say he never should have run for a second term in the first place.
Republicans were already incentivized to bash Biden and his enablers — and now, the Democrats have joined the fray, too. Meanwhile, you also have some of the nation’s top journalists, guys like Jake Tapper, Jonathan Allen, Amie Parnes, and Alex Thompson, making the media rounds, trying to gin up as much attention for their Biden-bashing books.
It’s too much. Biden will be destroyed.
And his enablers are going down with him.
If Biden were an exceptionally charming and/or charismatic public speaker, he might have a chance. Not a great chance, mind you — but at least a chance.
Unfortunately, Biden’s mental decline is almost certainly progressive. As bad as he was on “The View” last week, he’d probably be even worse if he returned to the set in six months. And if he can no longer defend himself — and if his enablers’ credibility is also ruined — he doesn’t have many options left.
Biden is too diminished to refute the allegations himself, and nobody’s gonna believe his surrogates anymore. Their credibility is shot.
The PR fallout is just beginning.
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