In the twilight of his political career, Joe Biden is disappearing into the background even before Donald Trump returns to the White House, despite growing turmoil at home and abroad.
The 82-year-old US president’s silence on a looming government shutdown over Christmas is just the latest example of how critics say the aging leader is in office but not in power.
Despite still occupying the world’s most powerful pulpit, Biden has remained virtually absent from the public debate about his noisy successor whom he often used to brand as a threat to democracy.
While Biden stays largely off the radar, it is Trump who increasingly calls the shots, whether by carrying out his own shadow foreign policy or by torpedoing a deal to fund the government.
“This is a Biden problem to solve!” Trump said on his TruthSocial network Friday.
Biden did make a public appearance on Friday at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington but did not address the shutdown threat — instead playing a game of catch with an energetic toddler.
Under intense questioning on Friday, the White House defended Biden’s silence on the stand-off with Republicans.
“They blew it up, and they need to fix it. This is not for the president to fix,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
It was always going to be a painful exit for Biden, after he was forced to drop out of the 2024 election in June following a disastrous debate against Trump.
He handed over the Democratic nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris yet was widely reported to have believed that he could have succeeded where she failed against the Republican.
