‘Consummate Insider’: Axelrod Digs At Biden While Comparing Him To Jimmy Carter’s Legacy

Former President Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod said President Joe Biden is Washington, D.C.’s “consummate insider” Monday on CNN while also comparing Biden to the legacy of former President Jimmy Carter, whom he described as D.C.’s “outsider.”

The Carter Center announced Sunday that the former Democratic president passed away at 100 years old after several brief hospital visits in recent years. On CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” guest host Wolf Blitzer replayed a clip of Biden remarking on Carter’s death, recalling how he was the first U.S. senator to endorse Carter’s bid for office. He asked Axelrod for his thoughts.

Axelrod began by commenting on Biden’s remarks about Carter’s character. He went on to say that the main difference between the two men was their involvement in D.C.

“But it strikes me that one difference between Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter was that Jimmy Carter spent four years in Washington. Joe Biden spent half a century,” Axelrod said. “Jimmy Carter was the consummate outsider. Joe Biden is the consummate insider.”

“There was never a real comfort between Carter and that town because he came with a promise to take on the conventional 🏛️Politics of that moment and to heal the country after Watergate and Vietnam,” Axelrod added. “That put him in conflict with a lot of the power brokers in Washington. He pushed ethics rules that existed for decades, including disclosing his own income taxes, inspectors general, independent of agencies to monitor what agencies were doing. He took on some of the sweetheart kind of deals in Washington and some of the projects that were wasteful, that were of particular interest to members of Congress.”