Poor bastard can't get speaking engagements

This is so unfair on so many levels. Obama is rumored to have a net worth approaching $100 million now (Forbes pegged it at $70 million/the NY Post $135 million). It was under $1 million when he entered the White House. Did he start any prospering businesses? Of course not except for his lucrative speaking tours and best selling books. And there's the Obama Presidential Library and Illinois Correction Center (for the criminally insane).

The we have the Clintons with their Clinton Foundation that famously raised almost $2 billion for their favorite "friends"....sorry I mean't worthwhile causes.

But Joe not only can't generate a dime, he can't even remember why? Plus Hunter wasn't the business generator he hope...only a noose around the family moniker.

Some people just can't catch a break.

Pictured left is the author who donates his time generously as a tour guide at the Obama Center Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Said Mr. Snitzer, "I don't understand why people think it looks like a prison?"

Joe Biden Is Struggling to Cash In on His Presidency

Companies are reluctant to hire the former president as a paid speaker due to his unpopularity and fear of retribution from Trump

Joe Biden’s postpresidency is less lucrative than what he had expected when he left office.

By Emily Glazer, Annie Linskey and Erich Schwartzel, WSJ

Sept. 15, 2025 9:00 pm ET

MALIBU—Joe Biden spent his first Independence Day out of the White House at a high-end trailer park.

The former first family crashed in this wealthy enclave at a place that belongs to the musician Moby, a buddy of Biden’s son Hunter. The ex-president and his wife parked themselves on the beach and dined in a sandy corner of the nearby Paradise Cove Beach Cafe.

It was a far cry from how Biden’s peers spent their summers. Barack and Michelle Obama wined and dined on Martha’s Vineyard while Bill and Hillary Clinton donned black tie in the Hamptons for wedding celebrations uniting her former staffer Huma Abedin with the favored son of billionaire Democratic funder George Soros.

Biden, 82 years old, is charting a postpresidency that is less lucrative than what he’d expected when he left office. Options for big jobs are limited by his advanced age, his unpopularity in Democratic circles and companies—concerned about retribution from President Trump—that aren’t offering speaking gigs. His own allies have grown critical of his presidency, most recently former Vice President Kamala Harris, who in a new book says the Democratic Party was reckless to allow Biden to run a second time.

The result for Biden is a leaner next chapter that lacks the well-funded foundations, plans for exquisite libraries and full calendar of paid speeches his peers enjoyed.

Instead of private jets, Biden has been spotted with a book on his lap in the first-class cabin of American Airlines flights or (talking) aboard Amtrak’s quiet car. Paid speaking appearances can range from $300,000 to $500,000, people briefed on the matter said. Takers are limited, and at least one organization tried to negotiate below that range, some of the people said.

Planning for inheritances

In the weeks after Biden left office, he confided in some that he intended to pay off around $800,000 in personal debt he had accumulated, including through loans on the $2.7 million Rehoboth Beach house he and Jill Biden had purchased in June 2017, according to a person familiar with his finances. The Bidens were hit by a 20% increase in their property taxes on the beach home this year, public records show.

On top of bills for Hunter Biden’s legal woes, Biden also wanted to help his daughter Ashley, who filed for divorce last month, and ensure money is left for his grandchildren, people close to the Bidens said.

A roughly $10 million book deal will give the former president a major financial boost. Biden also receives pensions from his federal government service totaling as much as $416,000 a year, which includes about $250,000 annually as a former president and up to $166,000 from his years in Congress and vice president, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, a nonprofit that tracks government spending.

A Biden spokesperson declined to comment.

Jill Biden has retired from her $100,000-a-year teaching job at Northern Virginia Community College and started a new unpaid position chairing the new Women’s Health Network at the Milken Institute, a think tank created by former financier Michael Milken.

If the family sticks to a modest-for-the-powerful lifestyle, “it’ll be fine,” the person familiar with their finances said. Others in the Biden orbit note that the family has a taste for a more lavish lifestyle, particularly if others are paying.

The family accrued some debt in recent years. There’s a mortgage with TD Bank obtained in 2013 and a home-equity loan with M&T Bank that Biden secured in 2022, financial disclosure records show.

The former president and his family also face personal hurdles. He is fighting prostate cancer, which one close friend called “a full-time job.” Several people said that Biden has privately echoed his public remarks that he’s responding well to treatment. Some of Biden’s friends and confidants said that Biden doesn’t like to talk about his cancer diagnosis. Biden recently appeared in public with a bandage on his forehead, the result of surgery for skin cancer, according to Biden spokeswoman Kelly Scully.

Another headache came when Hunter Biden gave a round of bombastic interviews on podcasts, including one that triggered a lawsuit threat from first lady Melania Trump.

The former first son, and father of five, has money troubles. Hunter Biden’s former wife, and the mother of three of his children, has had to go to court repeatedly over the last six years to request alimony, court papers show. He owed her more than $3 million in April 2023, according to a filing by her attorney that month, in a case that remains unresolved.

In March, Hunter Biden told a judge that he has “suffered a significant downturn in his income” since late 2023 and “has significant debt in the millions of dollars range,” explaining why he wanted to dismiss a lawsuit he’d brought against a conservative nonprofit that published a trove of the emails found on his laptop. Art sales and his book sales had dropped off significantly, he said in the court papers.

Also, like his father, paid speaking gigs were rare. “I was expecting to obtain paid speaking engagements and paid appearances, but that has not happened,” he told a judge.

A $275,000 speech offer

Human resources lobbying and advocacy group SHRM initially offered to pay Joe Biden $275,000 for a July keynote address to more than 20,000 attendees at the group’s annual convention, people familiar with the matter said. The group ultimately paid in the $300,000s, which included a so-called “travel buyout” to cover airfare and lodgings for him and his team. That was on the lower end of the $300,000 to $500,000 fee his team had been pitching, these people said.

A spokeswoman for CAA, which represents Biden, called the $275,000 figure “inaccurate.” She added: “The initial offer was within President Biden’s standard range, which is on par with past presidents.”

Some members of the organization, which has around 340,000 members, expressed frustrations on LinkedIn before the event that Biden would be speaking. Still, attendees said Biden received a standing ovation before and after his speech in San Diego, where he talked about topics including leadership and workforce transformation.

An SHRM spokeswoman declined to comment.

Biden this summer sold his presidential memoir to the Hachette Book Group for an advance in the range of $10 million, The Wall Street Journal reported in late July. The amount is far less than the $60 million deal secured by the Obamas when they left office.

The book is taking up much of Biden’s time these days, according to friends. Biden said at an event in July that he was “working my tail off” to write a memoir. Biden and his biographer are meeting with top Democrats and allies to unpack various chapters in Biden’s years in public service, according to people familiar with Biden’s schedule.

In one recent meeting, topics included major points in Biden’s presidency—including the 2020 election, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the inauguration, the impact of the Covid vaccine rollout and major legislation passed during Biden’s four years, according to a top Democrat who sat down with Biden and his biographer for two hours.

The 2024 election and Biden’s consequential decision to drop out didn’t come up, the person said. Another person said the book is shaping up to be a “life and times” of Biden and not a campaign tell-all.

The former first lady is also working on a book, according to people familiar with her plans. No publishing deal has been announced.

Meanwhile, the president is also raising money—slowly—for a presidential center. The current plan is to create it at the University of Delaware, which now hosts papers from his years in the Senate, according to people familiar with the plans. A spokesman for the University of Delaware said the school “would be honored to be considered among the finalists as the home of the Biden Presidential Library and Museum.”

Lingering frustration with how Biden left the campaign and his lack of transparency about his age-related limitations have made raising money a heavier lift, said people familiar with the effort. Biden’s team believes major Democratic donors ultimately will contribute.

Biden’s team is expecting a presidential center that is “less sexy” than the one Obama is constructing on the South Side of Chicago, according to people familiar with the planning. Biden’s 48 years as an elected official in the federal government means there are far more chapters to sift through than for other presidents.

Penn burned

Biden had said publicly that the University of Pennsylvania was interested in hosting his postpresidential center, but the Ivy League university (which has educated two of his children and several of his grandchildren) wasn’t eager to play the role, according to people familiar with the university’s thinking.

University leaders felt burned by their collaboration with Biden after he left the vice presidency, in part because the first batch of classified documents from his time in the White House were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, according to people familiar with the matter. More significantly, they were underwhelmed by the light programming Biden provided during the two years he was based there between launching the Penn Biden Center and his decision to run against Trump.

President Biden saying goodbye to his grandson before boarding Air Force One.

Biden traveled to Philadelphia in 2024 to visit the University of Pennsylvania campus with his grandson Hunter Biden II. Photo: samuel corum/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A spokesman for Penn said the university “was never asked or in conversations about hosting the library” for Biden, and that questions about how the university leaders feel toward the former president “are not pertinent.”

The Penn Biden Center will keep its name, but it has been more closely integrated into the academic programming of the University of Pennsylvania.

Write to Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com, Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com and Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com

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