President Biden compares himself to former President Obama in private as part of a years-long "rivalry" between the two men, according to a recent report.
"Obama would be jealous," Biden has reportedly said, "when speaking about a perceived accomplishment," according to two Biden aides who spoke with Axios.
Other Biden aides have complained that "Obama and his team did not fully appreciate Biden's experience with foreign policy, Congress and grip-and-grin politicking — and were disrespectful," the outlet revealed.
"The Obama people thought Biden would suck as president," one former Biden aide told Axios. "They didn't think he'd be organized enough to execute."
"We do have too many Obama people who don't care about Joe Biden. It's about them," a former White House official said.
"When people say, 'This is what worked for Obama,' their first response is often, 'We're not Obama,'" a "senior Democrat" reportedly said, referring to Biden's staff.
The disagreements between Biden and Obama go back more than a decade, with books and interviews from the Obama era revealing significant policy conflicts between the two.
An excerpt from "The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump" by Politico's Alexander Ward revealed a disagreement that took place behind closed doors between Obama and Biden when Russian forces invaded Crimea and later annexed the peninsula, making it a part of Russia.
"The United States might have done more had Barack Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, been in charge. Russia should 'pay in blood and money' for its actions, Biden told his boss as the 2014 invasion began. Obama disagreed, but he made Biden his effective ambassador to Ukraine during the crisis."
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White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates denied that the relationship between Biden and Obama was at all frayed in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying that Biden has not taken potshots at Obama in private.
"We recognize that the actual level of drama in this White House is insufficient to meet some reporting quotas, but President Biden does not make such comments in private," Bates said. "As President Biden has said, President Obama is family to him."
Bates described Obama and Biden as having a close "personal bond" and agreeing "overwhelmingly on the issues facing the country, including building an economy that works from the bottom-up and middle-out, protecting our critical freedoms, and opposing attacks on our democracy."
"There are no stronger supporters of President Biden’s leadership and agenda than President Obama, his team, and alumni of the Obama-Biden Administration – many of whom serve during this presidency," he continued. "And the President talks to both former President Obama and President Clinton often."
