Obama & Biden’s Relationship in ‘Really Bad’ Place After Joe’s Son’s ‘Pissed Off’ Rant Over Barack’s Treatment of His Dad
Jason Pham
Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s relationship is apparently in a “really bad” place since the 2024 presidential election, according to ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl.
In an interview on Katie Couric’s “Next Question With Katie Couric” podcast in November 2025, Karl reported that a recent sighting of Obama and Biden at the restaurant Cafe Milano in Washington D.C. in October 2025—where they were seated at separate tables and did not acknowledge each other—is an indication of their relationship now.
“They didn’t interact at all, they were in the same restaurant? What’s their relationship like?” Couric asked Karl, who responded, “Really bad. Really bad. Biden and the people around him very much blame Barack Obama for the effort to push Biden out of the campaign.” He continued, “It’s not a good relationship. If they had wanted to see each other, they absolutely would have.”
Obama and Biden were the president and vice president of the United States, respectively, from 2009 to 2017. Biden, for his part, became president of the United States from 2021 to 2025 before stepping down as the Democratic presidential nominee in the 2024 presidential election following concerns over his health. He was replaced by Kamala Harris, who lost the election to the current president, Donald Trump.
According to Karl, Biden also didn’t call Obama to secure his support for Harris after she replaced him as the democratic nominees. “I was astounded to hear that the one person he did not call was Barack Obama, the person that really made it possible for him to be president by making him vice president,” Karl said. “He didn’t call him then. Obama did call, I learned, to talk to Biden. He didn’t take the call, and the two of them did not speak for weeks.” Couric added, “So dysfunctional.”
News of Obama and Biden’s relationship also comes after Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, slammed Obama for a clip of them at a fundraiser in the summer of 2024, where Obama took Biden by the arm to lead him offstage—an action that Hunter believed made Biden look feeble. “I almost jumped up on the stage and said, ‘Don’t ever fucking do that to the president of the United States again—ever,’” Hunter said of the incident, according to Karl’s book, Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America , before explaining why Biden was taking so long to leave the stage. “He was taking a minute to acknowledge the crowd. I knew that that was going to be a meme. That really, really, really, really pissed me off.”
