In a revelation that cuts straight to the core of transparency, accountability, and the principles of democratic governance, a longtime aide to former President Joe Biden has acknowledged a disturbing mindset among senior White House staff: that bypassing democratic norms was justified—because the alternative, in their view, was worse.
This admission came during Fox News Sunday, when Axios journalist Alex Thompson peeled back the curtain on Biden’s inner circle. His reporting suggests that behind the carefully managed optics of the Biden presidency was a calculated power structure—run not by the elected commander-in-chief, but by unelected staffers who believed they were shielding the nation from the existential threat they saw in Donald Trump.
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“If you believe... that Donald Trump was and is an existential threat to democracy, you can rationalize anything, including sometimes doing undemocratic things,” Thompson reported. That single sentence captures the quiet but seismic transformation of the executive branch under Biden—where the democratic ideal of governance by the people gave way to governance by belief.
It’s a breathtaking admission: unelected staffers determined what was in the nation’s best interest and acted accordingly, even if it meant bending the rules.
The stakes, as they saw it, were too high for traditional limits. And so, the presidency became less about the man elected and more about the machine managing him.
According to Thompson’s reporting, Biden’s closest aides didn't just manage his calendar—they managed his presidency. They filtered who had access to him, orchestrated what he saw, and tightly controlled his public appearances. One Biden aide even confessed the administration’s strategy was essentially to “win and disappear.”
“He’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while,” the aide said. “His aides could pick up the slack.”
Let that sink in. A president’s constitutional duties outsourced to staffers with no public accountability, no electoral mandate, and—by their own admission—a willingness to sidestep democratic process if the justification felt right. Not because they were overtly corrupt or malicious, but because they believed they were saving democracy. The irony is chilling.