President Biden won the White House because the coronavirus left him hiding in the basement, protecting his campaign from its biggest responsibility: the candidate himself, says a new book.
Biden’s camp was based in part on the strategy of “putting the silly uncle in the basement,” referring to the Democratic candidate, according to “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency.”
Even former President Obama initially refused to support his 78-year-old former vice president and friend, worried he could become a “tragicomic caricature of an aged politician who has his last hurray” if not he protects himself, the book says.
The play’s authors – NBC News’ Jonathan Allen and The Hill’s Amie Parnes – write over and over that “the stars lined up” for Biden, a hopeful two-time losing president who triumphed in his third attempt in spite of himself.
And no one was more surprised than Trump’s camp.
The volume says that in May, Trump saw Biden give an interview to CNN and then asked top aide Kellyanne Conway, “What do you think?”
Conway replied, “I think if we lose for him, we’re pathetic,” the book says.
Trump laughed, say the book’s authors, who also wrote “Shattered” about Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential candidacy.
“Until the COVID thing came along, we won four hundred electoral votes,” a source familiar with Trump’s internal numbers around February 2020 told the authors.
Even one of Biden’s top advisers, Anita Dunn, allegedly told a partner at one point, “COVID was the best thing that ever happened to her.”
In mid-March 2020, Biden’s team turned the basement of his home in Wilmington, Florida, into an impromptu studio from which he could issue statements safely.
“They used the coronavirus as an excuse to keep it in the basement, and he was smart,” a Trump adviser told the authors.
“Biden was able to hide his greatest weakness, which is himself. And he did it with an excuse that seemed responsible. “
But the Biden broadcast on the night of the March 17 primaries was strange, the book says.
“There was a quality of hostage video on the show. It was cloudy and dark,” the book describes.
“As he spoke, there was always a slight delay in time, which made Biden’s words synchronize with the movements of his mouth. Was this the guy who would definitely send Donald Trump to Mar-a-Lago? “
A Biden aide told the authors, “I shuddered all the time. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing. “
Obama, meanwhile, “seemed to be in love with former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke,” as a presidential candidate, though he eventually left his weight behind his former vice president, who he once compared to a brother. , says the book.
And by the fall, Trump had become “his own invisible enemy,” the book says.
“With less than a month to go before the election, Trump had just come out of a performance in a debate in which he had made the challenger seem more presidential, he had few cash, he discouraged Republicans from voting by mail, he had contracted a disease that had killed more than two hundred thousand of its American comrades and ignored advice to show just an ounce of humanity, ”the authors write.
“He couldn’t see himself hurting himself.”
In a month, Biden would have won the presidency with “a bland message and a blank agenda,” the authors say.
The president’s representatives did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment Tuesday.
-Additional reports from Steven Nelson