CNN reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere predicted that President Biden's legacy may be largely forgotten after he lost to President-elect Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
"I think it’s a really difficult thing for Joe Biden to know that he came into the presidency as a rejection of Donald Trump," Dovere said. "And here he is being replaced by Donald Trump."
Biden's approval ratings have fallen since October, with the president standing at 34% approval and 66% disapproval in a Marquette Law School national poll conducted Dec. 2-11. It is the lowest approval rating for Biden in Marquette Law School polling since the president entered the White House four years ago.
NEW NATIONAL POLL REVEALS APPROVAL RATINGS FOR BIDEN, TRUMP AMIDST TRANSITION
"I do think that what you’ve seen is a slow receding into the bushes from Joe Biden here," he said.
"That is not the approach that Joe Biden has been taking, at least publicly since the election, certainly, and even since he ceded the nomination to Kamala Harris," Dovere said, citing "The West Wing" as an example of a hard-charging political leader. "But there are things that he could be doing through executive authority. A lot of things that he could be doing would probably put a target on them for Donald Trump to go after first."
"It does not seem like taking another vacation now is the kind of running through the tape mentality that White House staff has said he and the whole building is approaching things with," Dovere said.
Biden departed the White House for St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands for his final vacation as president with First Lady Jill Biden this month.
"I think back to an interview that I did with Joe Biden," Dovere said. "He’d been president for about three weeks, I was talking to him for a book that I wrote. And part of the takeaway that I had from it was him trying to assert himself as Joe Biden, the guy who got elected president."
"Not just Barack Obama’s vice president, not just the guy who beat Donald Trump," he continued. "But now that is part of who he is, and it may define who he is. A couple weeks before the election, I had a conversation with a senior person in the White House, and I said, if Harris loses, most of the way that Biden is going to be remembered, at least in the short-term, is the guy who was just in between the Trump terms."
"At this moment, that is the way that he is acting," Dovere said.
Fox News' Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
