Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, admitted Wednesday that he had been “naive” about former President Joe Biden and suggested that Biden would not be remembered as an effective president.
Grassley, who has served alongside nine presidents, told Miranda Devine on the “Pod Force One” podcast that he had a cordial relationship with Biden during their Senate years, working together on legislation and knowing him personally.
“I think it’s, if you feel like you know somebody well, it’s hard to believe some of the things that you originally heard, now you kind of know. I was a little naive about how I looked at the ‘President Biden’ compared to ‘Sen. Biden,’” Grassley said.
When Devine asked him to assess Biden’s time in office, Grassley responded, “Well, considering the fact that he doesn’t look like he was running it — at least in (the) recent two or three years — I think he’ll never go down in history as… a very effective president.”
Grassley said he had only one face-to-face meeting with Biden after he became president and acknowledged that he didn’t have “anything to judge it by.” Still, he noted changes in Biden both physically and mentally, referencing what he had seen on TV and heard from others.
On whether he thought Biden was being controlled by his staff, Grassley said, “Yes.”
“When you do a thousand commutations and pardons, and you don’t pay any attention to it, you aren’t doing your job,” he added.
Grassley also commented on Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, who was found guilty of three felony gun offenses and faced federal tax charges for failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes.
“I’m not surprised, but it shouldn’t have been done, and it proves the guilt of Hunter Biden,” Grassley said.
The senator had previously reacted on X in December when the pardon was announced: “I’m shocked Pres Biden pardoned his son Hunter [because] he said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him,” he wrote. “Shame on me.”
Biden’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Grassley has also drawn attention recently for defending the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition, a practice criticized by President Donald Trump.
The “blue slip” tradition allows Senate Republicans and Democrats to effectively veto district court and U.S. attorney nominees in their home states.
“We’re also going to be filing a lawsuit on blue slipping,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “You know, blue slips make it impossible for me, as president, to appoint a judge or a U.S. attorney because they have a gentleman’s agreement. Nothing memorialized. It’s a gentleman’s agreement that’s about 100 years old, where if you have a president, like a Republican, and if you have a Democrat senator, that senator can stop you from appointing a judge or a U.S. attorney, in particular, those two.”
