President Biden is readying to leave the White House with little fanfare.
Democrats are eager to turn the page on a poor year in which they lost again to President-elect Trump, who has swallowed up much of the spotlight well before he’s taken office for a second time.
Biden for his part has embarked on several major foreign trips since the election. He also pardoned his son, is working on reaching a ceasefire deal in Gaza, upping assistance to Ukraine and working the holiday circuit while delivering speeches in and around Washington.
He also made waves just before Christmas by announcing he was commuting the sentences of 37 people serving on federal death row.
But the president’s public presence has hardly registered while Trump’s cascade of announcements for his second Cabinet, a network television interview and his first press conference since winning the election at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida take up much of the media atmosphere.
That’s aside from Trump and his allies injecting themselves into onerous government funding negotiations at the year’s end, in which Biden and the White House were largely silent. That chorus was instead largely led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).