President Joe Biden issued a rare comment tweaking his former partner Barack Obama‘s administration – in words that suggest lingering tensions after former Obama aides led the charge for Biden to end his presidential campaign.
Biden was asked about his legacy for LGBTQ Americans as he returned to the White House after 1am on Tuesday.
‘Well, I’m really proud of my position. I was the first guy to come out for gay marriage. Remember that little problem with the Obama administration?’ Biden responded.
He was referencing his own 2012 comments endorsing same-sex marriage. That came a few days before Obama followed suit, and represented a rare public fissure.
‘I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, and women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying men and women, are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,’ Biden said to NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that year, in comments that put him in front of where Obama was at the time.
‘Quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that,’ Biden said.
It is rare for Biden to allude publicly to tensions or conflicts from his time with Obama.
President Joe Biden spoke about same sex marriage at the White House early Tuesday – and brought up ‘that little problem with the Obama administration.’ It came after members of Obama’s circle pushed Biden to end his run for reeelection
Weeks ago Biden finally succumbed to mounting pressure from within the party to end his presidential campaign after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.
Some of the most vocal proponents for making the change were former members of Obama’s inner circle, including CNN contributor David Axelrod and ‘Pod Save America’ broadcasters Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, Jon Lovett, and Dan Pfieffer.
Amid the move to push out Biden, Democratic operatives referenced another incident – Obama’s encouragement that Biden sit out the 2016 race following the death of his son, Beau – as a lingering issue that limited Obama’s ability to press Biden to step back for 2020.
Vice President Kamala Harris has unified support since Biden threw his support to her, and she is now polling better than he was nationally and in key swing states.
Actor George Clooney and some Obama aides referenced a joint fundraiser in June as showing that Biden wasn’t the same candidate he was four years ago
Biden engaged with the press during his trip to Texas this week. The White House says it is ‘recalibrating’ his role in light of VP Kamala Harris being the presumptive Democratic nominee
Biden made the latest comment while returning from a trip to Texas. He also repeated a story he has often told acceptance and watching two men kiss decades ago – although fact-checkers have cast doubt on the details about such a scene playing out in early 1960s Wilmington.
In this telling, Biden identified the companies that the men worked for. In other tellings, he has said he saw them walking into the respective buildings.
‘My dad had a simple proposition. God’s truth. My dad was dropping me off to get a license to be a lifeguard in the city of Wilmington — the projects.’
‘As I get out of the car and – Rodney Square, it’s called – the center of the city – someone from the DuPont company and the Hercules company – two large companies that are in buildings adjacent to one another – and I’m getting out of the car, and these two guys leaned up and kissed one another. I’d never seen that before.’
‘And I looked to my dad, and he said, “Joey, it’s simple. They love each other. It’s simple.” That’s my position,’ Biden said.
