The Biden family are apparently questioning whether several top campaign aides should be fired after last week’s disastrous debate debacle — as some allies accused President Biden’s preparation team of “political malpractice.”
Talk of axing the staffers unfolded in private as President Biden and his family hunkered down at Camp David over the weekend to discuss options amid mounting calls for the 81-year-old to give up his re-election campaign, sources told CNN.
During the discussions, some members of the first family trashed the senior aides and called for them to be put on the chopping block — as the likes of Jill and Hunter Biden urged the prez to stay in the 2024 race, according to the sources.
Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn; her husband and Biden’s attorney, Bob Bauer; and Biden’s ex-chief-of-staff, Ron Klain, were among those being blamed for the president’s train wreck performance last week, Politico reported, citing three people briefed on the family conversations.
The family’s chief complaints were that Biden hadn’t been better prepped during debate rehearsals to pivot and go on the attack, that he focused too much fn the night on trying to defend his record and, even, that he was too over-worked and tired, the sources claimed.
It wasn’t immediately clear which Biden family members were pointing the finger at the trio.
Biden campaign spokesman, Kevin Munoz, however, hit back at the claims.
“The aides who prepped the president have been with him for years, often decades, seeing him through victories and challenges. He maintains strong confidence in them,” he fired off in a statement.
It comes as a slew of Democrats and Biden allies have called on the president to weigh axing his prep team, or even just step down, following his fumbling and halting performance.
One top Biden fundraiser, John Morgan, said Biden’s debate-prep team were guilty of “political malpractice.”
“It is my belief that he was over-coached, over-practiced. And I believe [senior aide] Anita Dunn… put him in a venue that was conducive for Trump and not for him,” Morgan, a Florida-based attorney, said.
He added that Dunn and her husband, who played Trump in pre-debate rehearsals, should “be fired forever and never let back anywhere near the campaign.”
Biden’s debate strategy was signed off on by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who helped him win in 2020 and was appointed in January to boost an uneven reelection campaign.
Dunn, a longtime Biden aide and ex-Barack Obama campaign strategist, had backed the strategy.
Biden’s campaign have insisted repeatedly in the days since the debate that no staff shake-up is under consideration.
With Post wires