Anthony Bernal: The Unelected General Secretary?

The question is not whether Joe Biden was elected, nor even whether he held the title of president. The question is whether he, in fact, exercised the powers of the presidency in a manner consistent with constitutional expectations. The evidence increasingly suggests he did not. Instead, what emerges from insider testimony, journalistic investigations, and congressional inquiries is a portrait of a presidency managed by a surrogate board of directors, with Jill Biden acting as chairwoman, and Anthony Bernal, her senior advisor, functioning as the de facto general secretary of a sort of politburo in the White House.

This was not a presidency in the ordinary sense. It was a regency, and an unusually opaque one at that.

At the heart of the arrangement stood Jill Biden, whose role vastly exceeded the ceremonial functions traditionally associated with first ladies. She was, in the words of one West Wing aide, “one of the most powerful first ladies in history.” Her influence was neither subtle nor symbolic. Jill Biden, alongside a quintet of loyalists, Bruce Reed, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Ron Klain, and Bernal, constituted a sort of politburo, managing access, policy decisions, and ultimately, the perception of Joe Biden’s command. Yet, of these five, only Bernal possessed unrestricted access to the president’s residence, effectively placing him in the role of liaison, enforcer, and, at times, executive decision-maker.

Anthony Bernal’s rise to power was not accidental. He had served with the Bidens since the Obama years, was Jill Biden’s top aide during the 2020 campaign, and was given the unusually lofty title of deputy campaign manager. That title alone should have raised eyebrows: when was the last time a spouse’s advisor helped run a presidential campaign? It signaled a shift in the locus of power, from Joe Biden himself to the trusted circle surrounding his wife.

Bernal’s influence within the White House was both subtle and sweeping. Though his formal role was situated in the East Wing, where he served as assistant to the president and senior advisor to the first lady, his actions permeated the West Wing. He controlled access to the president with a kind of bureaucratic vigilance, reportedly asking staff, “Are you a Biden person?” before granting or denying an audience. This ideological filtration mechanism ensured that only the loyal survived, and that dissenters were quickly marginalized or removed.

Unlike traditional chiefs of staff, Bernal operated without institutional accountability. His access to the president’s residence was virtually unmatched. His badge read “Res,” granting him entry into the private quarters of the White House, a status not afforded even to most senior Cabinet members. In this sanctum, Bernal became the intermediary through which nearly all communications, decisions, and logistics passed. Staffers, Cabinet officials, and even members of Congress found it more expedient to go through Bernal than to attempt direct contact with the president or even the first lady. This was not merely an administrative convenience, it was a structural delegation of executive power.

Critics of this arrangement have been quick to allege that such a configuration amounts to a subversion of democratic norms. They are not wrong. In a constitutional republic, the president is not a figurehead to be managed by caretakers. Nor is the first lady, unelected and unaccountable, meant to wield power by proxy. Yet this appears to have been the very design. One White House insider put it plainly: “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”

Evidence for this dynamic is manifold. Axios reported that both Bernal and Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini took extraordinary measures to limit who could see the president, establishing a cordon around him that included denying even longtime White House staff access. Residence staff, traditionally responsible for the first family’s well-being, were marginalized. Bernal and Tomasini reportedly took on their duties themselves, further concentrating control.

Such behavior is not merely unusual; it is unprecedented. Not even during the final days of Woodrow Wilson, when his wife Edith acted as an unofficial steward following his stroke, was access to the president so restricted or channeled through such a narrow pipeline.

Indeed, the very nature of Bernal’s power defies conventional classification. He was not chief of staff, national security advisor, or director of communications. He was something more amorphous, and thereby more dangerous: the enforcer of a regime masquerading as a presidency. His temperament reportedly matched the authoritarianism of his role. Colleagues described him as aggressive, with a penchant for browbeating and trash-talking other aides. Some went so far as to call him the “worst person they had ever met in the White House.”

Yet these character flaws were not bugs, they were features. Bernal’s ability to insulate the president from reality, to suppress dissent, and to act decisively on Jill Biden’s behalf made him indispensable to a governing structure built on obfuscation. If a member of the Cabinet needed a decision, they called Bernal. If a piece of legislation required a White House response, Bernal often made the call. Only when a matter rose to the level of public scrutiny or strategic significance did it reach Jill Biden or the rest of the Politburo.

That this arrangement persisted for four years is itself a testament to the complicity of the press and the Democratic Party establishment. Journalists were not blind to Biden’s decline, but they were loath to amplify it. The myth of Biden’s steady hand was more politically useful than the reality of his cognitive fragility. It was not until Tapper and Thompson’s Original Sin revealed the inner workings of the Biden White House that the extent of this shadow governance began to take shape.

To be clear, none of this is to suggest that Joe Biden was wholly incapacitated. Rather, it is to suggest that his capacity was sufficiently diminished that real power accrued elsewhere, and that the mechanisms for executive decision-making were quietly transferred to an unelected cadre. That cadre operated without transparency, without oversight, and without constitutional legitimacy.

In the final analysis, the Biden administration was not so much a presidency as a holding company, with Joe Biden as chairman emeritus, Jill Biden as executive director, and Anthony Bernal as chief operating officer. This structure did not collapse under its own contradictions only because its contradictions were never publicly acknowledged.

But the American people deserved better. They deserved a president who governed, not one who was governed. They deserved a press that investigated, not one that insulated. And they deserved a government that honored its constitutional order, not one that outsourced executive function to a cabal.

If you enjoy my work, please consider subscribing: https://x.com/amuse.

Sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping independent journalists overcome formidable challenges in today’s media landscape and bring crucial stories to you.

READ NEXT: Trump Issues Surprise Pardon To Former GOP Congressman