President Biden won the White House because the coronavirus kept him hidden in his basement and protected his campaign from the greatest liability – the candidate himself, reads a new book.
The Biden camp was based in part on the strategy of ‘you put your dumb uncle in the basement’, referring to the Democratic candidate, according to ‘Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely won the Presidency.’
Even former President Obama initially refused to support his 78-year-old former vice president and friend, worrying he could become a “tragicomic caricature of an older politician who had his last hurray” if it did not of himself is not protected, reads the book.
President Joe Biden talks about efforts to combat COVID-19 in the White House State Dining Room, Tuesday, March 2, 2021, in Washington.
(AP)
The authors of the work – Jonathan Allen of NBC News and Amie Parnes of The Hill – repeatedly write ‘the stars’ in line’ for Biden, a former two-time hopeful president who was hopeful on his third attempt despite himself.
And no one has been caught more off guard than the Trump camp.
The tome says that in May, Trump saw Biden give a CNN interview and then asked Kellyanne Conway, the top assistant, “What do you think?”
Conway replied, “I think if we lose against him, we are pathetic,” the book says.
Trump laughed, say the authors of the book, who also wrote “Shattered” about Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid in 2016.
“Until the COVID thing came, we won four hundred election votes,” a source familiar with Trump’s internal numbers around February 2020 claimed to the authors.
Even one of Biden’s top advisers, Anita Dunn, reportedly told a co-worker at one point, “COVID was the best thing that ever happened to him.”
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In mid-March 2020, Biden’s team converted the basement of his home in Wilmington, Del., Into a temporary studio from which he could safely issue statements.
“They used coronavirus as an excuse to keep him in the basement, and that was smart,” a Trump adviser told the authors.
“Biden was able to hide his greatest weakness, that is, himself. And he did so with an apology that sounded responsible.”
But Biden’s broadcast on the night of the March 17 primary was just strange, the book reads.
“There was a hostage video quality to the broadcast. It was cloudy and dark,” the book describes.
“While he was speaking, there was a time lag that did not put Biden’s words apart with the movements of his mouth. That was the man who would send Donald Trump to Mar-a-Lago forever?”
One Biden assistant told the writers: ‘I was pulling together all the time. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing. ‘
Meanwhile, Obama ‘equated with former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke’ as a presidential candidate, although he eventually placed his influence behind his former vice president, whom he once compared to a brother, the book.
And by the fall, Trump had become “his own invisible enemy,” the book reads.
“With less than a month to go until the election, Trump has just had a debate in which he managed to make the challenger look more presidential, he had little cash, he discouraged Republicans from voting by post. “he contracted a disease that killed more than 200,000 of his fellow Americans, and he ignored advice to show just a hint of humanity,” the authors write.
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“He could not see that he had injured himself.”
Biden would have won the presidency within a month with “a soft message and an empty agenda,” the authors said.
Reps to the president on Tuesday did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.
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