President Obama’s former speechwriter says he is “pre-frustrated” with President Biden’s attempt to find unity with Republicans.
What they say: Cody Keenan told Axios that Biden’s messaging team ‘hit all the right chords’, but at some point ‘they will have to answer questions like:’ Why did you not achieve unity? ‘when there is a whole political party already acting to stop it. ‘
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Keenan wrote for Obama for 14 years, including eight of those years working with Biden. He admitted he was embittered by his own experience, especially after Senator Mitch McConnell promised to make his former boss a one-term president.
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“Until the Republican Party acts and tells their own voters what’s really happening to the truth, it’s going to be elusive,” Keenan said. “It’s not (President Biden) who has to deliver. He can not.”
Keenan helped Obama with the first volume of his memoirs, “A Promised Land.” He stopped working with the former president on New Year’s Eve and held a full-time role at Fenway Strategies. The firm is run by another former Obama speechwriter – Jon Favreau – and presidential assistant, Tommy Vietor.
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“It just looked like a natural place after the book and the election, and you know, [Obama] not going to do a ton, especially not with Biden in office, “Keenan said.
Keenan is also writing a book, titled “Grace,” over the ten days from the 2015 shooting in a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, to the praise Obama gave for Rev. Clementa Pinckney delivered.
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Obama ended by singing ‘Amazing Grace’.
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The title also nods to Keenan’s newborn daughter, named Grace.
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