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We know Joe Biden used terrible words.
One of the most famous moments in the president’s long public career was the signing ceremony of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, when the then-vice president was captured on a hot mic and asked Barack Obama. In response, he said the country’s health care law needed to be updated. It was BFD. Except Biden didn’t use that acronym.
What people may not know, and what CNN’s reporting on journalist Bob Woodward’s new book reveals, is that Biden apparently swears like a sailor.
The book contains a number of notable details obtained by CNN’s Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb and Elizabeth Stewart ahead of its publication next week.
Gangel reveals the most shocking facts from Woodward’s new book
Read the full report, which chronicles stories like the Saudi crown prince’s big bag of burner phones and Biden’s regrets over choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general.
Woodward has written immersive coverage of all recent presidents, including multiple books on Trump, and this article focused on the Biden administration is based on hundreds of hours of interviews. Many of these interviews were conducted by one of the journalists who spoke with Deep Throat during the Watergate era, and are reported without attribution.
It’s an interesting exercise to compare how Woodward talks to these politicians behind closed doors (with admittedly harsh language) and how they talk to them in public.
President Trump has said publicly that he has a good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that he withheld orders from Putin after Trump warned Putin not to invade Ukraine.
Here’s what President Trump told tech billionaire Elon Musk in an interview with X earlier this year:
I told President Vladimir Putin, “Please stop.” You can’t do that, Vladimir. If you do that, you’re going to have a bad day. You can’t do that. And when I told him what I was doing, he said, “No way.” And I said, “Well.” And you know that’s the last time we talked. He would never have done that – I got along well with him. I hope to get along well with him again.
President Trump added that getting along with powerful world leaders is “a good thing.”
The undisclosed details in Mr. Woodward’s book lend an age to how Mr. Trump gets along with world leaders. There is no evidence in the text in the CNN report that President Trump enacted the law for President Putin.
Rather, President Trump sent some coronavirus testing equipment to President Putin at a time when Americans lacked coronavirus testing equipment. Putin is clearly trying to protect Trump, telling the then-US president not to tell anyone about the gift.
“No, no,” Putin said, according to Woodward’s book. “Don’t tell anyone because people will be mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.”
President Trump told ABC on Tuesday that the report was “false.”
Mr. Woodward also reported that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin remained close, and have likely spoken on the phone seven times since Mr. Trump left office in early 2021, according to an anonymous Trump aide. The Trump campaign denied the report, and the former president also denied it. This was reported in an interview with Newsmax on Tuesday.
About Biden, Harris and Prime Minister Netanyahu
The Biden administration has sought to maintain support for Israel while diplomatically expressing dissatisfaction with Israeli leader and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
When asked on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” whether Prime Minister Netanyahu is a close ally, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate in November’s election, responded strictly with disdain for Prime Minister Netanyahu. Although he did not do so, he kept Netanyahu at arm’s length.
“With all due respect, I think the better question would be: Are there significant alliances between the American people and the Israeli people?” Harris said. “The answer to that question is yes.”
According to Woodward’s book, there’s even more invective in the plain sight of the White House.
Biden called Prime Minister Netanyahu a “bad guy” and then repeated the phrase, adding the F-word. The president also used this expletive in private when calling Prime Minister Netanyahu a liar. Biden also used the term in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Israel’s Beirut airstrike in July.
“Oh my god,” Biden told Netanyahu, Woodward said.
Woodward also said Biden used harsh words to describe Trump, calling him “that son of a bitch.”
Former President George W. Bush has been sympathetic to Biden over the president’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and has spoken expletives about how he was wronged by “intelligence people.” It is said that he uses it to explain things. This was probably an allusion to the flawed intelligence that the Bush administration used to sell the invasion of Iraq to the United Nations and the American public.
Ironically, Mr. Woodward’s report sheds new light on the recent great victory of the US intelligence community, which used apparently human sources to infiltrate the Kremlin’s war plans against Ukraine. This information was accurate, but the Biden administration was unable to convince Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that it was true, even when Harris asserted it directly at a meeting in Munich.
Mr. Biden privately acknowledged that Mr. Obama was unable to take Mr. Putin seriously and that his administration, including Mr. Biden, “made a fuss” when Mr. Putin claimed Crimea in 2014. .
The new book also includes an anecdote in which Harris purportedly explains her own ability to use name-calling.
Most people may speak differently when they find themselves in public. Somehow, Woodward seems to be channeling those private words in a very public way.
This story has been updated with additional responses.
