President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign tried to fake a folksy town hall, but the cameras caught a flop. In April of that year, his team orchestrated a closed-door event in a Delaware high school gym, hoping to capture a sharp, coherent Biden for a campaign ad. The result? Ninety minutes of unusable footage that exposed the campaign’s desperate struggle to prop up an 81-year-old candidate, as Axios reports.
The Delaware event was a carefully scripted attempt to show Biden at his best, with pre-selected questions from voters. The campaign’s goal was to film him speaking fluidly in a freewheeling setting, but the plan backfired spectacularly. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book, Original Sin, reveals the campaign’s ongoing battle to manage Biden’s faltering public appearances.
Biden’s team shut out the press, banking on two cameras to capture a polished performance. They filmed for an hour and a half, but the footage was a disaster, blamed on bad lighting by some, on Biden’s shaky delivery by others. One insider didn’t mince words: “The man could not speak.”
That Delaware debacle wasn’t a one-off; Biden’s campaign routinely struggled to get decent video clips. Even simple recorded remarks for fundraisers or supportive groups often ended in mistakes. The White House capped video addresses at one or two minutes, knowing Biden couldn’t sustain longer without flubbing lines.
Two-camera setups, a standard campaign trick, became Biden’s crutch. Jump cuts patched up his errors, but the heavy editing sometimes left videos looking like a bad splice job. Campaign staff often regretted releasing these Frankenstein clips, which only highlighted Biden’s limitations.
“Every shoot was anxiety-inducing for Biden’s team,” Tapper and Thompson write. Their book, built on interviews with over 200 Democratic Party insiders, paints a grim picture of a campaign scrambling to hide Biden’s weaknesses. Apparently, authenticity took a backseat to damage control.
Biden’s team ditched genuine town halls for staged ones like the Delaware fiasco. These events were less about connecting with voters and more about filming commercials to mask Biden’s struggles. The reliance on pre-scripted questions shows a campaign more concerned with optics than substance.
When supportive groups asked for a five-minute video, the White House balked, offering a measly minute or two. The reason? Biden couldn’t deliver even short remarks without tripping over his words. This wasn’t leadership -- it was a carefully managed illusion.
The campaign’s heavy reliance on editing raised eyebrows even among allies. Using two cameras to fix flubbed lines is common, but Biden’s team leaned on it so much that it worried campaign officials. If you need that much post-production for a simple video, maybe the problem isn’t the lighting.
Tapper and Thompson’s book pulls no punches, detailing the campaign’s video struggles through insider accounts. Most of their 200-plus interviews, conducted largely after the election, came from Democratic insiders spilling the tea. The portrait they paint isn’t flattering: a campaign in constant crisis mode.
Jill Biden pushed back on such critiques earlier this month on The View. “The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us,” she said. Nice try, but 200 insiders beg to differ, and their stories align too well to dismiss.
Jill’s defense also claimed Joe “worked every single day.” Hard work isn’t the issue -- competence is. If Biden’s team had to stage town halls and edit videos into oblivion just to make him look functional, that’s not a flex; it’s a red flag.
The Delaware town hall was a microcosm of Biden’s campaign: all smoke, no fire. Pre-selected questions, a press blackout, and a 90-minute shoot that produced nothing usable reveal a team more focused on appearances than reality. Voters deserve better than a president who can’t speak without a script and a splice.
Biden’s campaign has not commented on the book’s claims, which speaks volumes. Silence isn’t exactly a rebuttal when 200 insiders are airing your dirty laundry. Turns out, you can’t edit the truth as easily as a bad video.
This saga, laid bare in Original Sin, shows a campaign that treated voters like props in a bad movie. If Biden’s team thought they could fool America with staged events and jump cuts, they underestimated the audience. Actions, or lack thereof, have consequences.
