Feeling out a bizarre post-presidency, Biden reemerges on the public stage

(CNN) — Joe Biden has been hankering to do more. Many leading Democrats across the country — including some former top aides and close allies, who note they’re sad to say it — are desperate for the former president to stick to a quiet retirement.

But Tuesday in Chicago, Biden waded into one of the most charged political fights set off by President Donald Trump. The first big public speech of Biden’s post-presidency focused on protecting Social Security and comes as many Democrats stage a national day of action against feared cuts to the program, with protests planned across the country.

It’s an odd spot for someone who was the leader of the free world less than 100 days ago, and for those who have been trying to sort out what to say and do about a man they feel affection for but blame in part for the situation they’re in now.

Asked by CNN about hearing from the former president since January 20, one longtime supporter and donor said only this: “No. Thank God.”

While Trump is still attacking him nearly daily from the White House or Air Force One — to an extent that amazes the former president’s inner circle — Biden’s world has shrunk drastically since he left the Oval Office just three months ago.

Only a few of Biden’s most loyal aides stayed with him, mainly those who were the last fighting for him to stay in the presidential race. He’s been mostly at home in Delaware, coming back to an office in Washington about once a week, often via his beloved Amtrak. He’ll occasionally get spotted around Wilmington, but his public appearances have been limited to a Model United Nations conference in New York, a St. Patrick’s Day brunch in Delaware and accepting a lifetime achievement award from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers at the union’s convention in Washington this month.

People close to Biden are calling this a period of “reconnecting, rebuilding and reflecting” — with his grandchildren, with old friends, with movies and books he missed, even just with a wife he now gets to see for more of the day than only dinner. He even got to put on a tuxedo for the premiere of the latest “Othello” on Broadway and greet the cast backstage as star Denzel Washington talked about the honor of his attendance.

He’s been putting together thoughts for a book he’s hoping to sign a deal for soon. He’s been having intense conversations with some of the freed Israeli hostages and families of others.

Sunday afternoon, Biden called Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to express his sympathy and support after the attack on the governor’s mansion hours after a Passover seder there. Sunday evening, Biden joined Delaware’s new governor, Matt Meyer, as a guest at a seder himself.

Meyer welcomed Biden to the group of about 50 community leaders and family members by talking “about what a friend of Delaware Joe is, and what a friend of the Jewish people Joe is.” He joked that the former president had probably spent more time in synagogue than he has.

Though Biden didn’t lead any of the participatory service, in short remarks of his own, Meyer recalled, he talked poignantly about Passover “as a day for a hope for a brighter future.”

Biden has yet to begin fundraising for his presidential library, to the confusion of several loyal donors who told CNN they had been expecting to hear from him. He and his aides have been sketching out a focus for his foundation in raising up and protecting his legacy, but they’re still working up a mission statement and board of directors.

Several Democratic officials who supported Biden for years told CNN they have had, at most, passing conversations with him. Others say they’ve been amazed how completely he’s disappeared.

“I haven’t heard of one person who has communicated with him,” said one Democratic member of Congress who talked with Biden regularly over the years.

Publicly, Biden and his tight circle have stayed quiet about the unflattering reports trickling in from the pile of books being published about the 2024 campaign. Privately, they’ve been less serene, most of all about former chief of staff Ron Klain questioning Biden’s mental state in on-the-record comments to author Chris Whipple. Family and close aides went on a rampage in a flurry of calls, though Klain, in a statement to CNN, said the published comments were “framed to distort my meaning.”

But Klain also reached out several times to Biden to apologize, according to people familiar.

“Joe Biden is going to thrive in that very wise, senior statesman role of ‘How do you help navigate?’ And I think people do want him engaged and involved,” one person close to Biden told CNN. “We’re not hearing ‘Stay away.’ We’re hearing the opposite. But it’s not going to look like it did before — they’re not running for anything.”

Starting to speak out against Trump

Ever the institutionalist, Biden deliberately waited most of Trump’s first 100 days to speak out, before accepting the invitation to Tuesday’s meeting of the Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled, or ACRD — a relatively new group of mostly lawyers who work with Social Security beneficiaries, co-chaired by Republican former Sen. Roy Blunt and Democratic former Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

Martin O’Malley, the Social Security Administration commissioner under Biden, who introduced him at the event, told CNN on Monday that with Biden’s long record of speaking about the dignity of work and bolstering the program, this is a fitting way for him to return to public life.

In fact, O’Malley said, he hopes that Biden will encourage more people, including the other living former presidents, to speak out against Trump’s plans.

“One of the stabilizing influences in the history of our republic has been the voices of former presidents,” said O’Malley, a former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor. “President Biden’s administration racked up a lot of important progress for the people of our country. I don’t believe that as a party we did the best job we could have in telling that story. But there’s no time like the present.”

Biden is making a relatively fast return to the fray for a former president: Eight years ago, when Barack Obama first popped up in public the April after Trump’s first inauguration, his only comment about his successor was a sly passing joke.

But Biden already started sounding off earlier this month. It’s just that almost no one noticed.

In his speech to the IBEW conference on April 4, kept closed to the press amid concerns of triggering Trump’s wrath, union International President Kenneth Cooper presented Biden with a certificate naming him an honorary member and praising him for having “led with his heart and soul.”

When he stepped to the microphone, Biden reminisced about his long relationship with organized labor, including being the first sitting president to walk a picket line, as he did in 2023.

It wasn’t all warmth and nostalgia.

Two days after Trump sent global markets careening with his “Liberation Day” tariffs and amid the reversals that followed, Biden talked to 1,000 people at the Washington Hilton about his own economic record and said, “That economy is being squandered — utterly, needlessly squandered.”

“You know, folks, I spent the last two years of my presidency hearing the press and the pundits talking about how I was about to send the country into a recession. Remember that? It was relentless,” Biden said, according to a person in the room. “Well, guess what? It never happened. We did not have a recession when I was president. But, do you want to know what we did have? We had the strongest economy in the world.”

In office, Biden was often frustrated he didn’t get more credit for the strength of the economy he’d overseen. Out of office, he still is.

“I’ll say it again: On the day I left office, America had the strongest economy in the world. That’s a fact. It’s not just my view. It’s the consensus view among economists and financial publications around the world,” Biden said. “And now, what’s happening?”

One IBEW member in the crowd later posted on Facebook that the former president’s speech was “very feisty.”

Expectations for a scaled-down library

Toward the end of Biden’s term, his aides were floating plans for keeping him in the conversation after he left office. About as far as they got was saying he might start an account on BlueSky, the social media platform emerging as a more left-leaning alternative to Elon Musk’s X.

He did not.

While most modern presidents filled part of their lame-duck time planning libraries and foundations, Biden — who never had many relationships with major donors — put together the paperwork for his foundation only in December, with weeks left in his term.

No one expected Biden to attempt anything on the scale of the giant campus, complete with community fitness center and a branch of the Chicago public library, that Obama is raising for upward of $2 billion to build, but he’s facing overlapping problems that will complicate even getting a fraction of that. Many devoted donors felt burned and ignored during his presidency, struggling for basics like invitations to White House holiday receptions — and that was before they blamed him for helping along Trump’s return in November. Despite a black-tie thank-you dinner for some of his most committed supporters held at the White House a few weeks after the election, several donors described to CNN feeling too bitter and resentful to write checks.

Among those who are considering giving, some fear that donating to Biden could make them targets for retribution from Trump.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul who was a key early fundraiser for Obama’s efforts and then took on a central advisory role for Biden’s aborted reelection campaign until the relationship fell out, did not respond when asked by CNN what, if anything, he would do to help Biden now.

And time may be short: Biden, 82, is already the oldest president to leave office. That means less time to fundraise, but also a different sensibility for a foundation that people involved acknowledge will likely be a vehicle for 10 to 15 years of a post-presidency, rather than the 50-year horizon that Bill Clinton’s or Obama’s was structured for.

“He’s trying to listen and connect with people, and then organize on how he stays engaged across the board,” said one person involved with the foundation planning. “That’s what we’ve been trying to do.”

Biden and aides have been talking with the Kennedy and Clinton families and staffs, and listening to Obama aides on how a digital collection could alter traditional approaches to presidential libraries and museums. Three main options are in play: building in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania; reworking the center he started to build at the University of Delaware after his vice presidency; or building out from his other existing relationship at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Though some Biden administration alumni have been checking in, several former top aides told CNN they haven’t heard from the former president — or the small staff now managing him — for months.

For many, disappointment in how Biden’s presidency ended has curdled into bitterness and sad exasperation. Suspecting that all the successes they racked up won’t be memorialized as grandly as they might have if not for his difficult last year in office has them depressed.

“It’s crushing,” one former top aide told CNN.

But Rufus Gifford, a deputy campaign manager for Biden in 2020 and finance chair for his 2024 campaign with deep relationships with donors, said he believes the former president speaking out more could actually be a boost for the relatively small group of deep-pocketed donors who can fund libraries, and who keep asking Biden aides for a clear plan.

“There is less anger at Joe Biden right now than there is nostalgia, given what we are up against,” Gifford said. “The skepticism will quickly wane as he talks in a more gloves-off manner.”

Feeling out a political future

Biden’s only significant political meeting of his post-presidency so far was with new Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin.

Asked what role he would like the former president to play for Democrats going forward, and how Biden could be most helpful in rebuilding the party, Martin did not answer with any specifics.

Through a spokesperson, Martin provided a statement: “No Democratic president has invested more in the party’s infrastructure than Joe Biden, and I’m deeply grateful for the president’s service not only to our nation, but his ongoing commitment to the party.”

Aides familiar with the matter, though, say a March 31 DNC fundraising email signed by Biden was one of its best-performing of the year, and also reactivated tens of thousands of donors.

“I think with every passing day, people miss him more and more. He’s for sure a net positive,” O’Malley said.

“You can agree or disagree with Joe Biden’s policies and politics, but this is a man who cares deeply for our country and has personally sacrificed so much for our country,” said Meyer. “The degree to which he’s seen as a divisive figure now, to us in Delaware, is kind of strange. He’s always been one to bring us together.”

This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.

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