Democratic strategist James Carville criticized President Joe Biden in a podcast interview, calling him “the most tragic figure in American politics in my lifetime.”
The former Clinton-era strategist expressed his unvarnished opinions about Biden as he prepared to hand over office to his former rival and now President-elect Donald Trump in January.
‘All this. It’s all so damn self-inflicted. It’s tragic, it’s sad,” Carville said during an interview on the channel Political war room podcast for Policon.
He added that Biden made a big mistake by running for re-election, and that the vice president knew he messed up by running again.
“If he had said in September 2023 or August that he would not run, we would have won this election,” Carville said.
Carville also expressed frustration over Biden’s decision to grant a broad-based pardon to his son Hunter Biden, which he described as “an indefensible act of nepotism.”
“I think Hunter Biden was illegally trading on the family name,” he said, adding that Biden’s decision would hurt Democrats politically and give Trump political power in the future.
Carville argued that had Biden resigned earlier, giving a Democrat more time to campaign and win, a Democratic successor could have pardoned or commuted Hunter’s sentence with far less controversy.
US President Joe Biden leaves after attending the 102nd National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony
Former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville has delivered a brutal assessment of Joe Biden’s legacy
“It didn’t have to be this way, he owed it all to himself,” he said.
Carville compared Biden’s legacy to that of failed presidents such as Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson.
“I actually feel for Biden because he knows that he messed up, and that he wasn’t crooked, that he didn’t have bad policies, that he’s the most tolerant, loving, caring, unbiased person you could imagine and this is what he has to deal with. It’s a damn shame,” he concluded.
During his campaign, President-elect Trump repeatedly labeled Biden the worst president in history for presiding over inflationary policies, government spending and global political unrest.
A new exclusive Daily Mail/JL Partners poll found that American voters agree with Trump, who says he is worse than former President Jimmy Carter.
Biden has an approval ranking of -30, worse than former President Richard Nixon, who is at -25, and President Jimmy Carter, who ends up with a net zero ranking.
The poll of 1,006 registered voters asked them to rank the last nine presidents from best to worst. Biden came in last, the worst president in 47 years.
James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners, acknowledged that there was a “recency bias” that hurt Biden as the current incumbent president, but the outcome was worse than he expected.
“Voters clearly looked at his age, general behavior while in office, his failed withdrawal from Afghanistan and the situation at the southern border, and decided that, in their view, this qualifies him as the worst president in modern history,” he said. .
Biden, 82, will leave office on January 20, 2025.