Biden’s old colleagues are looking for new jobs. And they can’t seem to make it work.
Now a former Biden official got laughed at for a terrible interview performance.
A Candidate Who Wants To Talk About His Accomplishments — Just Not Too Hard About Them
The California governor’s race is wide open and brutally competitive, with the June 2 primary approaching and no guarantee that any Democrat will make it into the top two. In that environment, what a candidate says on camera — or asks before the camera turns on — can define a week.
Xavier Becerra, the former Biden HHS Secretary and current Democratic frontrunner, just learned that lesson. In a clip now circulating widely on social media, Becerra can be heard setting his terms ahead of a sit-down interview with local television. What he said was either amusingly candid or politically disqualifying, depending on your vantage point.
“By the way, this is a profile piece — this is not a gotcha piece, right?” Becerra asked.
When the reporter indicated the interview would include some challenging questions alongside the favorable coverage, Becerra pushed back further. “The way I describe a profile is: You talk about all the things that I’ve done, things that I want to do, along with some tough questions. But not only tough questions,” he said.
The clip traveled fast. Before the day was out, it had drawn rebukes not from Republicans but from Becerra’s fellow candidates in a Democratic primary where the working assumption had been that Becerra — with his long career, statewide name recognition, and Biden administration pedigree — was the man to beat.
His Own Party Lines Up To Pile On
Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff running on the Republican side, went directly for the jugular on X. “The media has given Becerra a free pass for so long, but he’s got enough skeletons he’s still afraid,” Bianco posted.
But the more pointed commentary came from within the Democratic field itself. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a moderate Democrat who has positioned himself as a common-sense alternative to the progressive wing, was cutting.
“Fixing the problems Californians are facing isn’t easy — but answering questions about them sure should be,” Mahan wrote on X. His campaign account added: “By the way, part of being governor is answering tough questions.”
The most revealing rebuke came from David Axelrod — the architect of Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns and arguably the most respected strategist in the modern Democratic Party. Axelrod’s observation connected the pre-interview request to something larger: a pattern of communication avoidance that characterized Becerra’s entire tenure as Biden’s HHS Secretary.
“As HHS [Secretary] during COVID, Becerra was rarely the administration’s point person in communicating to the American people on the pandemic. This may be the reason why,” Axelrod wrote.
It is a damaging observation, stated with minimal editorializing. The man who ran HHS during one of the most consequential public health crises in American history was so rarely the face of the administration’s COVID messaging that the sitting president and Dr. Fauci effectively sidelined him in front of the American public. And now, running for the highest office in the most populous state in the country, Becerra is on camera asking a reporter to please keep it largely friendly.
The Biden Legacy Problem
The timing of the Becerra clip is also awkward for reasons that go beyond communication style. Becerra served as Biden’s HHS Secretary from 2021 to 2025 — a tenure that included the vaccine rollout, the COVID policy battles, and the steady erosion of public trust in federal health institutions that has accelerated under the current Senate investigations into vaccine safety data. He is, in other words, a living embodiment of the Biden-era health establishment at precisely the moment that establishment faces its most searching scrutiny in years.
In a California primary that also features Katie Porter, Tom Steyer, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, Steve Hilton, and Sheriff Chad Bianco, Becerra needs to demonstrate that he can walk onto a debate stage — or into an interview chair — and hold his own under pressure. The clip does not inspire confidence. The question now is whether it becomes a footnote in the race’s history or the moment that defined its narrative.
