Joe Biden appears in three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, in each case as a figure invoked rather than examined. The excerpts contain no discussion of his career, his positions in his own words, or his administration; he enters as a hypothetical in an impeachment conversation, as a platform plank in a debate over worker classification, and as the presumed author of an agenda that a guest predicted would cost Democrats their majorities.
Impeachment and the Ukraine hypothetical
In the January 2020 episode on the Senate impeachment trial, Bob Zadek posed a hypothetical to John Rothmann: that Donald Trump believed, rightly or wrongly or on the advice of advisers, that Joe Biden was sharing state secrets with Ukraine, and that Trump said aloud that he had to get to the bottom of it because Biden was a possible traitor and a political opponent he could be rid of. Zadek asked whether Trump had committed an impeachable offense Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
Rothmann answered that the mention of Biden’s name opened the door that the president’s defenders would use, and that they would go after Biden on grounds of corruption. He stated that Biden was not about to be impeached or convicted by the Senate and was not on trial; what was on trial, he said, was that the president asked the leader of a foreign nation to investigate a potential political opponent while holding up aid appropriated by Congress. Rothmann called those facts indisputable and characterized the proceeding as a political rather than a legal process, comparing it to Republican treatment of Barack Obama and Democratic treatment of Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
Zadek pressed the point that motive mattered to many Americans and to the media, arguing that soliciting a foreign government’s aid to ferret out a spy would be not merely neutral but obligatory, assuming Biden were not running for office or a possible competitor. Rothmann replied that if the president believed Biden had done something, the normal process was to go to the Attorney General and have the Justice Department initiate an investigation, and that for a president to invite the leader of a foreign nation dependent on the United States to dig up dirt on a political opponent was unconscionable. He said the president broke the law by holding up the aid in a quid pro quo and cited Mick Mulvaney’s statement in the White House briefing room that of course it was a quid pro quo Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
Rothmann predicted the trial would be over within a week and that the president would be acquitted on a near party-line vote, 53 to 47, with perhaps a couple of Democrats in tough reelection battles voting to defend him. He cited polls showing 53% of Americans believed the president should be removed, said no American president running head-to-head had won without the support of the American people, and concluded that Trump would have to shore up his base. On Biden he said only that Biden would certainly be a major contender, might well be the Democratic nominee, and that if he were, the president’s contentions about Biden would be put front and center Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
The PRO Act, AB 5 and Biden’s platform
In the July 2020 episode on worker classification, Zadek raised a bill in Congress he called the PRO Act, an acronym he said he did not know; Kim Kavin supplied that it stood for Protecting the Right to Organize. Zadek observed that organize equals unions and asked how the issue might affect independent contractors who might otherwise be loyal Democratic voters Terrible New Worker “Protection” Laws Threaten the Gig Economy (2020).
Zadek stated that Biden had as a specific element in his platform that he would support AB 5 on a national level, and framed the coming presidential election as unavoidable context. Kavin declined to speak for all Americans on how they would vote, but said the pandemic had made clear to every American of all political persuasions what happens when government shuts down the ability to work, and that a voter whose career was caught in the crosshairs would not feel good pulling the lever for someone saying they would shut it down anyway. She said the legislation had already passed the House, that lawmakers including Democrats who had voted for it listened when walked through the problems with how it was written, and that the head of the AFL-CIO had said a no vote would mean no dollars or campaign help in the election cycle Terrible New Worker “Protection” Laws Threaten the Gig Economy (2020).
Zadek returned to Biden in a later segment, listing AB 5, then New Jersey, New York — which he said had backed off — and now Congress and Joe Biden as instances of legislation he characterized as criminalizing the freedom to contract and denying the freedom to organize one’s own work life. He argued the issue could readjust voting blocs, and said that while it affected women profoundly it also affected minorities profoundly by denying them what he called the first rung on the ladder of entrepreneurial independence Terrible New Worker “Protection” Laws Threaten the Gig Economy (2020).
Kavin cited an article by a member named Elaine Pofeldt headlined “California’s AB 5 Leaves Women Business Owners Reeling,” and said women are the fastest-growing group of business owners in the country, with the number of women-owned businesses up over 20% from 2014 to 2019 compared to 9% for all other businesses. She described the question as one of choice — how she wants to work rather than what she does with her body. She also said that a month earlier, in the middle of COVID, the head of the California Black Chamber of Commerce and the president and CEO of the Los Angeles Urban League had come out attacking the legislation and saying it was destroying the lives of black business owners Terrible New Worker “Protection” Laws Threaten the Gig Economy (2020).
The Capitol riot episode: Biden’s agenda and unstable majorities
In the January 2021 episode, Biden appears in Nick Gillespie’s account of unstable majorities. Gillespie cited the political scientist Morris Fiorina of Stanford, who he said had described how since the beginning of the 21st century each party gets partial or complete control of federal government in an election and then within two or four years it flips, which Gillespie called historically very rare. He attributed it to both parties being so extreme that they struggle to get much more than 50% plus one voter, and said that when a party gets in, its extremists push an agenda revolting to most people and the party gets thrown out The Capitol Riot in Context (2021).
Gillespie called the 2020 election one of the good things in this respect: Trump was repudiated at the national level, but the Democrats were also repudiated at the congressional level, and if Trump had not been so awful between November and then, the Republicans would still control the Senate. He described the Democratic majority as very, very slim, and said that if Joe Biden pushes his agenda — which he said The Washington Post of all places had called the most liberal platform any Democrat had ever run on — the Republicans would be back in power in 2022 or 2024. He said the parties would keep producing unstable majorities until they approximated a government that gives people more freedom regardless of the dollar amount of the government The Capitol Riot in Context (2021).
Gillespie also said that although Biden ultimately won fairly handily in the popular vote, the contest was much closer, and that Democrats projected to take the Senate in a big way and increase gains in the House actually lost seats in the House, with most people saying they would lose control in 2022 or 2024. He traced the pattern back to Florida in 2000, where a few thousand votes separated George Bush and Al Gore The Capitol Riot in Context (2021).
Zadek’s contributions in that episode concerned political parties generally rather than Biden: that the extremes of both parties aspire to a muscular government and want power over the other side, that he cared about power rather than the size of government, and that elections are close because each party cobbles together disparate groups to reach 50.1% — a marketing cooperative rather than a political philosophy The Capitol Riot in Context (2021).
Across episodes
The three episodes do not develop a view of Biden; they use him for different arguments. In January 2020 Rothmann treated Biden as the potential nominee whose name would open the corruption line of defense in an impeachment trial he expected to end in acquittal. In July 2020 Zadek treated Biden’s platform support for a national AB 5 as a campaign issue that could move women, minority and independent-contractor voters. In January 2021 Gillespie treated Biden’s agenda as the trigger for a predicted Republican return in 2022 or 2024. What changes across the three is the role assigned to him — hypothetical, platform, agenda — not any assessment of the man, which the excerpts never supply.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no discussion of Biden’s career before 2020, his record as a senator or vice president, his administration, or any policy of his described in his own words. The Ukraine allegations appear only as Zadek’s expressly hypothetical premise and as Rothmann’s description of what the president’s defenders would argue; no excerpt states what Biden did or did not do. The claim that he supported AB 5 nationally is Zadek’s characterization of his platform, not a quotation from Biden or from any document. No excerpt reports an election result beyond Gillespie’s statement that Biden won the popular vote fairly handily.