Former First Lady Michelle Obama has distanced herself from the Bidens over the family’s treatment of her close friend and Hunter Biden’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, according to an exclusive report from Axios.
“The family tensions — and the former first lady’s disdain for partisan politics — are partly why one of the Democrats’ most popular voices hasn’t campaigned for President Biden’s re-election,” two sources told the outlet.
Michelle Obama was also reportedly “initially reluctant” to campaign for President Joe Biden when he became the nominee in 2020.
But Michelle Obama was not the only one unsettled by the Biden family, according to the report.
After a fundraiser in the fall of 2017 for the Beau Biden Foundation, a children’s advocacy group, former President Obama privately described the Biden family dynamics at the fundraiser as “weird sh*t,” according to a person familiar with his remarks.
During that time, Hunter Biden was recently divorced from Buhle and dating Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden.
Michelle Obama — who did not go to the fundraiser — had felt at that time that the Biden family had wronged Buhle and blamed her for “salacious” details of Hunter Biden’s behavior going public, after she had dealt with his drug use and infidelity.
File/Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) greets Obama daughters Malia and Sasha on day four of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at Invesco Field at Mile High August 28, 2008 in Denver, Colorado. (Charles Ommanney/Getty Images)
But the tensions between the Obamas and Bidens came even before Hunter Biden and Buhle divorced, according to the report.
The relationship “changed in 2015,” when President Obama discouraged then-Vice President Joe Biden from running for president in 2016.
Obama aides have long privately argued that the former president dissuaded Biden from running due to the grief of his son Beau’s death. However, Biden felt his boss was dissuading him because he preferred Hillary Clinton.
But even before that, Hunter Biden had also “grown to resent the Obama White House” after Obama’s team made him quit his job as a lobbyist due to concerns about the optics, Axios reported.
Hunter had written in his memoir that quitting that job felt like “riding the escalator without an exit. I once again had huge expenses and no savings, and now I had to bust my ass to build another career from scratch.”
Hunter had also written about how some Obama staffers would undercut and mock his father.
Kathleen Buhle attends a lunch with President Joe Biden and family in Philadelphia, Monday, May 15, 2023, after the President attended a commencement ceremony for his grand daughter Maisy Biden, Buhle’s daughter, at the University of Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
“I didn’t hang around the White House much; I didn’t want to be in the position of walking into a barbecue on a Sunday with the president and the White House staff after reading about someone throwing my dad under the bus,” Hunter had written, according to Axios. “I knew I couldn’t control my temper and keep my mouth shut.”
Despite these tensions, there have been “discussions” between the two camps about the popular former first lady campaigning for Biden this year.
According to the report, top White House aide Anita Dunn and top Michelle Obama aide Melissa Winter recently had lunch and talked about “specific ways Biden’s campaign could involve the former first lady.”
Both camps are outwardly playing nice for now, with a Michelle Obama spokesperson saying that she supported Biden’s re-election and she is also “friends with Kathleen and with the Bidens.” “Two things can be true,” spokesperson Crystal Carson told Axios.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates denied the tensions, saying the two camps “are like family.”
“The Biden and Obama families are like family to one other, and whomever made these claims about that relationship isn’t familiar with it,” he said.
Buhle did not respond to Axios’s request for comment.
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