President Joe Biden’s choice to exit the presidential race in July was motivated in no small half by the high-profile struggles that plagued his son, Hunter Biden, within the last years of his first time period — leaving him with a “crushing” sense of guilt that these near the outgoing president say plagued him greater than the wars in Ukraine and the Center East.
In his new e-book, “War,” famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward affords readers an intimate look inside each the Trump and Biden presidencies at a few of their most weak moments; providing a uncommon, split-screen view into the pondering of two very completely different leaders as they stared down a number of the largest international coverage challenges and safety dangers in trendy reminiscence.
Fox Information obtained an early copy of the e-book forward of its launch subsequent week.
Woodward’s e-book captures the extra intimate moments of each presidencies, as nicely. For Biden, this consists of the aftermath of his disastrous efficiency on the first presidential debate in June — watched by an estimated 51 million individuals — and the torrent of strain it unleashed inside the Democratic Social gathering for Biden to exit the race.
Amongst social gathering leaders and donors, it crystallized long-held fears that Biden, 81, was now not match to carry his personal in a second match-up in opposition to Donald Trump. Their panic was matched solely by their sense of urgency and the ticking clock they needed to choose an appropriate nominee.
BIDEN WON’T PARDON HUNTER, WHITE HOUSE REAFFIRMS, BUT CRITICS AREN’T SO SURE
President Joe Biden and former U.S. President Donald Trump throughout the first presidential debate. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures)
As Woodward reviews, Biden struggled mightily to simply accept that consensus — first, by trying to brush off his catastrophic efficiency as a nasty evening and an occasion he may get better from within the months forward. The tsunami of strain on him to drop out solely acquired stronger.
Actually, in response to Woodward, Biden was leaning within the route of staying within the race on July 4, when he met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a personal lunch. Blinken, who had proven as much as the lunch ready for a tough dialog, advised Woodward that Biden nonetheless believed he may win a second time period as president — a title he had chased all his life and at last achieved.
In his telling, among the many elements in the end driving his choice to bow out was the scrutiny and authorized troubles surrounding his son Hunter.
The toll his son’s troubles had taken was obvious when the 2 met, Woodward reviews. Blinken, in his telling, spoke frankly to Biden about dropping out. “I don’t want to see your legacy jeopardized,” he stated.
President Biden hugs his son Hunter Biden throughout the Democratic Nationwide Conference Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photograph/Paul Sancya)
Sensing little headway, Blinken then tried a special strategy. “Do you really want to be doing this for the next four years?” he requested.
Biden’s first time period included overseeing the U.S. restoration from a worldwide pandemic, the primary conflict on European soil since World Battle II, and the begin of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Every day was charged with turmoil and lasting consequence. And but, these near Biden say it was his youthful son, Hunter Biden, whose struggles appeared to weigh most closely on the president.
Hunter’s troubles are described within the e-book as Biden’s “real war”: a relentless supply of preoccupation for the president, who was continuously preventing in opposition to his fatherly instincts to guard his son, his “beautiful boy,” as he known as him — and to reconcile the deep sense of guilt he felt, in understanding his presidency had been a driving issue behind a lot of the scrutiny surrounding his son.
POLITICAL STORM: ON TRUMP ‘ONSLAUGHT OF LIES,’ BIDEN URGES FORMER PRESIDENT TO ‘GET A LIFE, MAN’
Hunter Biden, accompanied by his mom, first woman Jill Biden, and his spouse, Melissa Cohen Biden, exit federal court docket in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photograph/Matt Rourke)
For Biden, this data left him heartbroken” and affected him more than the major crises playing out abroad in Europe and the Middle East, sources told Woodward took the president “off an excellent keel,” preoccupied him and taken “so much out of him.”
In describing the president’s inner turmoil to Woodward, Blinken himself teared up, thinking of his own relationships with two young children.
Biden, Blinken explained, “desperately” wanted to pull Hunter “out of the abyss” — to reel him in, to protect him — but his attempts and best efforts had failed.
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The book does not detail the extent to which Hunter’s legal woes and investigations were directly involved in the president’s decision to step down, which was likely the result of myriad factors, internal party pressures, and deeply personal considerations. The White House did not respond to Fox News’s request for comment on the matter.
The book offers an unflinching look at one of the president’s most emotionally difficult struggles, one which staying in the race would have ultimately exacerbated.
“Battle” will be out on bookstore shelves October 15.
