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Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Wednesday he had been “naive” about former President Joe Biden and argued 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 got along with Biden when they were both senators, noting they worked on legislation together and knew each other 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.
Devine asked Grassley how he would assess Biden’s time in office.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, left, during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Former President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House on January 15, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Mandel Ngan – Pool/Getty Images)
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“Well, considering the fact that he doesn’t look like he was running it — at least in recent two or three years — I think he’ll never go down in history as a very effective senator, or a very effective president,” he said.
Grassley told Devine that he only had one face-to-face meeting with Biden after he became president. Grassley also acknowledged that he didn’t have “anything to judge it by,” but said that he felt a lot changed for the former president physically and mentally, pointing to what others have said, as well as seeing Biden on TV.
Asked by Devine whether he thought Biden was being controlled by his staff, Grassley replied, “Yes.”
“When you do a thousand commutations and pardons, and you don’t pay any attention to it, you aren’t doing your job,” the Republican senator said.
The podcast host also pressed Grassley on Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden.
Hunter was found guilty of three felony firearm offenses and was also charged with federal tax crimes regarding the failure to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden, leave the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building on June 7, 2024, in Wilmington, Delaware. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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“I’m not surprised, but it shouldn’t have been done, and it proves the guilt of Hunter Biden,” Grassley responded.
The senator reacted on X in December when Biden announced the pardon.
“I’m shocked Pres Biden pardoned his son Hunter [because] he said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him,” Grassley wrote. “Shame on me.”
Biden’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Grassley has made headlines recently for defending the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition, which drew criticism from President Donald Trump.
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Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is seen in the U.S. Capitol after the senate luncheons. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
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The “blue slip” tradition in the Senate effectively gives Senate Republicans and Democrats the ability to 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.”
