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An ex-Biden campaign staffer blamed the former president’s decision to seek a second term for President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, as the Biden family mounts a public effort to rehabilitate Biden’s political legacy, according to a report from New York Magazine.
“I think it is very hard to ever get over the fact that he is responsible for the hellscape that we live in now,” the former campaign staffer told New York Magazine. “It is undeniable that his hubris cost us. He was an extremely impactful president who was successful in delivering tangible wins for Americans, but all of that is washed away.”
The report, published Friday, detailed Biden’s June 5 appearance at the South Dakota Democratic Party’s McGovern Day Dinner in Sioux Falls, where the 83-year-old former president addressed roughly 1,200 Democrats at a Best Western near the airport.
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Biden used the speech to attack Trump while telling the crowd that he had to leave early for his goddaughter’s wedding.
“So when I run off the stage it’s not because I’m afraid to hear the response,” Biden said.
New York Magazine reported that Biden spoke quietly, occasionally yelled and at times lost his train of thought, but still received a warm response from the Democratic audience.
Biden called Trump, “the most corrupt president in the history of the United States,” according to the report.
The event was part of what the report described as an “aggressive effort” by Biden’s family and inner circle to remind the public that Biden’s presidency should not be defined only by his 2024 loss to Trump.
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Rufus Gifford, who served as finance chair of Biden’s campaign and now chairs the board for Biden’s presidential library, argued that Democrats are beginning to move past the election.
“Without a doubt, every day, there is less of a ’24 hangover,” Gifford told New York Magazine. “It’s not solved, but there’s less of a hangover and more of a nostalgia for normal times.”
Other Democrats were more skeptical of putting Biden back in the spotlight.
David Axelrod, a longtime Obama advisor, warned that Biden’s public reemergence could remind voters why Democrats pushed him out of the race.
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“Putting him front and center will remind people why he was forced to leave the stage,” Axelrod told New York Magazine.
Tommy Vietor, a former Obama spokesman and co-host of “Pod Save America,” criticized the way Biden and his allies have framed the fallout from 2024.
“Joe Biden is only a victim of what others did to him,” Vietor said. “He never views the country as the victim of what he did to us.”
Former first lady Jill Biden also re-entered the public conversation through her memoir, “View From the East Wing,” which was released in early June.
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After former Biden spokesman Andrew Bates questioned why the party’s painful 2024 debate needed to be reopened publicly, Jill Biden responded during an event in Washington, D.C.
“I want to say to Andrew, ‘Call me up and say it to my face,’” she said.
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Hunter Biden also defended his father in the report.
“They never truly understood Joe Biden,” Hunter Biden said.
Biden’s office announced in May 2025 that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.
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