There’s a strange photo of Joe Biden and Barack Obama standing on a tarmac in PA back in 2014.
Why is it so strange?
Well, for a few reasons.
One is their airplanes in the background… the way they’re parked makes it appear as if Joe Biden was “summoned” to the airport by Obama.
Next is their body language. Both men have their hands in their pockets, but Joe Biden looks submissive, and Obama, by the look on his face, and the way he’s leaning in, appears to be the aggressor.
The photo was taken by the White House photographer and Obama-sycophant Pete Souza.
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Look:
There’s always been a lot of mystery surrounding this image.
Why were the two men meeting with no aides or staffers around on a tarmac in Pittsburgh?
What is it with Dems and tarmacs? Nothing good ever comes from those meetings, right?
But one of the biggest mysteries about this image, was why was it so significant, that Obama’s friend and former White House photographer choose it for the official photo gallery?
Seems odd, no?
Well, former White House stenographer Mike McCormick thinks he knows exactly what was going on in this photo… and it’s because of something that happened on April 16th.
Mike took to Substack, where he wrote a really interesting piece about the photo:
It was very significant to me that this photo was put in an April White House Photo Gallery because, frankly, it’s a non-descript photo. Two guys standing on the tarmac in front airplanes in Pittsburgh. There’s not a lot of drama in it. There’s not a lot of evocative imagery in it. It’s not a typical White House Photo Gallery photo. And I know a lot about those — I’ve seen them displayed on White House walls for 15 years as a stenographer there.
If you look at this photo, you see that the two people standing there are President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Biden is standing looking at Barack Obama as Obama has exited his limousine. Over Obama’s left shoulder is Air Force One. In the background, and to his left, you can see the tail end of Air Force Two. That’s Joe’s plane. This is significant to me because this is Barack Obama summoning Joe Biden for a face-to-face conference in kind of a private situation. There’s no staff around. They’re standing right out there on the tarmac face-to-face.
And if you look at Joe, he’s a little bit submissive. He’s got his hands in his pockets. It’s almost like he’s hiding something, and I think that’s what’s happening. If you look at Barack Obama, he’s got this hands in his pockets. The body language here is of two men — they don’t seem to be particularly energized or enthusiastic about anything. In fact, if I was to look at this, I would look at Barack Obama’s posture as being the boss who is leaning into a subordinate and saying, what is going on?
Because I know what happened on April 16th, 2014, early in the morning. I know what Barack Obama was looking for out of Joe Biden. I know what Joe Biden did later in the day with his son Hunter and Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer. And then he got on a plane and he went to a joint campaign event with Barack Obama to promote community colleges. This is 2014, they’re doing some campaigning. They’re doing some rah-rah for crowds in Pennsylvania, critical state for them.
But here’s a photo by Pete Souza. Why is this photo chosen as part of this photo gallery? And I think the reason is Pete Souza is a very close confidant of Barack Obama. He was a more a friend than a photographer. Barack Obama went to Pete Souza’s wedding. Pete Souza and Barack Obama would play iPhone Scrabble all day long. And this is 2014, you have to understand, this is the tail end of Barack Obama’s presidency. He wasn’t very invested in his presidency then — I can tell you from personal experience. A lot of his interests lay in how his golf game was. And frankly, he spent a lot of time playing iPhone scrabble with his photographer, which to this day I think is really weird. But that’s who these guys were.
So why does Pete Souza take this picture? What I wrote in my book Joe Biden Unauthorized and the 2020 Crackup of the Democratic Party on this day was there was a meeting with Joe Biden and David Axelrod supposedly set up at the Vice President’s Residence (the VPR) over breakfast. It had come out of a meeting the evening before with Axelrod, Plouffe, Messina, other senior advisors, and Barack Obama in the Roosevelt Room — but pointedly without Joe Biden or his staffers.
So Barack Obama was invested in having David Axelrod say something to Joe Biden, invested enough to direct him, go to Joe Biden first thing in the morning. It either happened, or it didn’t happen. It’s hard to tell because if you look in my book at the way the White House Visitor Logs identify the line item of Axelrod’s visit, it looks like a lot of information has been scrubbed. Much of the usual information that’s included in a White House Visitor Log entry is missing. The only thing that has been recorded is the date, April 16th; the event, Breakfast; the site, VPR; and David Axelrod’s name. So you don’t know what the — when he made the appointment. You don’t know if he entered or if he exited. And you don’t know who he made the appointment with. This information is typically included in a White House Visitor Log. It’s not there for David’s Axelrod’s visit to the VPR, if it took place.
So this airport photo occurs late in the afternoon of the day in which Joe Biden has met in his office with his son and his son’s Burisma board member business partner. And you will find on my Substack out there is a lot they had talked about. As they left that meeting, and this is what I had in my last Substack, Hunter and Devon Archer put on their calendar an immediate — almost immediately upon leaving that West Wing meeting with Joe, it looks like sometime in the afternoon, about 2:00 on this April 16th, 2014, date, they set up a phone call for the very next morning with Aleksander Kwasniewski, who was sort of the head of the Burisma Holdings board. He was the guy who officially recruited Hunter and Devon Archer onto the board, although Joe Biden apparently had a lot to say about that process with Kwasniewski, who was a close associate of Joe Biden back in Joe Biden’s days in the Senate.
So there’s a lot of overlap here on April 16th with Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Burisma Holdings, and now here’s this photo of Barack Obama weighing in on Joe. To me it looks like Obama is trying to ascertain from Biden, you know, what’s really going on, Joe?
And I think Joe is lying to him. And I think Barack Obama knows that Joe is lying to him. And Barack Obama did nothing to further the inquiry. I think he sent Axelrod there in the morning to inquire about what was going — what’s going on with you and Burisma? Because at this point in time, this is April 16th, Joe is about five days away from landing in Ukraine with a packet of American assistance, a lot of it going to Burisma Holdings.
And Mike goes on to theorize that he thinks that’s precisely why this photo was included in the official gallery… Pete was there that day with Obama, and since the two were friends, Obama likely confided in him about what was going on and why Joe was being summoned there.
This gives the photo much more relevance for Pete, who understands the backstory, and that’s why he included what many would call an unremarkable photo in the gallery.
Interesting, right?