For 3 1/2 years, the Biden White House has seemed remarkably leakproof. Even amid popular backlash to administration policies — the spending splurge in 2021 that was followed by sharp inflation in 2022 and 2023, the changes in enforcement of immigration laws that have produced numbers of incoming illegal immigrants unmatched even in border boom periods in the 1980s and 1990s, and the endorsement of policies allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports — top officials have stuck to talking points and avoided finger-pointing.
It has not been clear who — Top aides? Cabinet appointees? Family members? — has urged the president on these unpopular courses, which are out of line with his responses over many years in the Senate and seem at odds with his 2020 campaign presentation as a return to normalcy from the volatility of the Trump administration.
