Zoom out: Biden’s temper comes in the form of angry interrogations rather than erratic tantrums.
He’ll grill aides on topics until it’s clear they don’t know the answer to a question — a routine that some see as meticulous and others call “stump the chump” or “stump the dummy.”
Being yelled at by the president has become an internal initiation ceremony in this White House, aides say — if Biden doesn’t yell at you, it could be a sign he doesn’t respect you.
[Yeah, and if he hits you, it means he *really* loves you. Axios tries mightily to normalize this behavior, but it’s disturbing, especially for someone Biden’s age. He’s always been needlessly combative; one clip from the 1987 campaign showed him challenging a critic to a fight, and he did something similar in the last presidential campaign with an auto worker defending the 2nd Amendment. His natural pugilism is the kind of overcompensation one usually sees from stuffed suits, but this sounds as though it’s being compounded by Biden’s cognition issues. And if a Republican president exhibited this kind of behavior, Axios and other media outlets wouldn’t hesitate to point that out. Beege will have more on this later today. — Ed]
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