Obama alums trash 'stubborn old man' Biden’s ‘feckless’ Jan. 6 op-ed
The liberal hosts behind "Pod Save America" trashed President Biden’s Washington Post op-ed about January 6 as "feckless" and blasted the Democrats for "performing virtue" after Vice President Kamala Harris certified Donald Trump’s election Monday.
"There's like an entire language that Democrats just need to f--king throw in the trash about like 'institutions,' 'democracy,' 'sacred this,'" said Jon Favreau, who served as one of former President Barack Obama’s speechwriters.
Biden warned on Monday that America risks a repeat of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot if the history of the day is forgotten, and called on the country to "commit to remembering" the incident annually.
"But we should not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago," Biden wrote.
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Podcast co-host and former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett claimed Biden misunderstood the quote about repeating history, coined by philosopher George Santayana and went so far as to liken Biden to a "stubborn old man."
"If you’re too mired in the past, if you become, this is from the original philosopher, stubborn like an old man, you also become doomed to repeat yourself," Lovett said.
"That’s pretty on the nose," co-host and former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
The hosts savaged the op-ed as being out of step with the American electorate, conceding that the majority of voters "didn’t care" about the events of January 6.
"Biden’s op-ed didn’t say anything," Favreau said. "An op-ed about Jan. 6 is the perfect encapsulation of how feckless everything feels in this moment."
The Democratic Party has faced increasing calls to change how it communicates with voters, with critics alleging that it relies on overly "woke" and academic rhetoric that alienates ordinary people.
Clinton campaign alum James Carville called on Democrats to tone down the "idiotic NPR jargon" when talking to voters in an interview Sunday with MSNBC host Jen Psaki.
"Let’s just be authentic and to the point," Carville said.
The hosts continued to bash Biden’s op-ed for failing to offer any concrete steps to fight back against what they see as a "coup attempt" by Trump.
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"Our party is one sad op-ed," Vietor said.
"Democrats performing virtue, explaining over and over again why the insurrection is so terrible, did not work. This style of politics is not working," Lovett said.
Vietor claimed the piece made him "very frustrated with Joe Biden all over again for running for re-election." The trio was part of the liberal pressure campaign against the president to step aside from running for re-election after a dismal debate performance against Trump in June.
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Though there were indications throughout his first term that Biden was experiencing a decline, Democrats and the mainstream media frequently covered for his declining mental state.
"His mental acuity is great. It’s fine. It’s as good as it’s been over the years. All this right-wing propaganda that his mental acuity has declined is wrong," then-Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told "Meet The Press" in February.
Vietor called out Biden and his close aides as "delusional" after which the Washington Post reported they believed he would have won the election had he stayed in the race.
In a November episode of the podcast, Favreau claimed that Biden’s internal polling had him losing the election by "400 electoral votes."
Biden is not the only Democratic politician to face accusations of being tone-deaf. After Harris’s campaign bosses appeared on a November post-mortem episode of Pod Save America, listeners accused them of "taking no accountability" for her loss.