Former top Obama White House adviser David Axelrod says Joe Biden is running his 2020 presidential campaign as if he were in the federal witness protection program, and also trashed his “bewildering” defense of son Hunter’s controversial business dealings in foreign countries.

“They have him in the candidate protection program,” Axelrod said in a profile of Biden in New York magazine, headlined “The Zombie Campaign.”

“I don’t know if you can do that. I don’t know if you can get through a whole campaign that way. Either he can hack it or he can’t hack it. If you’re worried the candidate can hurt himself talking to a reporter, that’s a bad sign,” Axelrod said in the piece.

Biden has been criticized for bumbling performances during the primary debates and the campaign has limited his interactions with reporters on the trail.

Axelrod also expressed concern that Biden looks like he’s just “hanging on,” with Elizabeth Warren nipping at his heels and even overtaking him in some polls.

“Perhaps he can [hang on]. But that’s generally not the way the physics of these things work. Generally, you’re either moving up or moving down. Warren is clearly moving up. There’s no sign that he is,” Axelrod said.

Meanwhile, Axelrod said he was perplexed by the former vice president’s continued defense of his son’s actions. Hunter Biden has come under fire for his dealings with Bursisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company, as well as other foreign firms.

“It’s sort of bewildering. I guess I understand it from a familial, psychological sense. It would just be so much better if he stated the obvious: Even Hunter has said he exercised poor judgment. He won’t even say what his kid said,” Axelrod said.

“It’s an obvious question as to why the rules that he’s going to apply in the future didn’t apply in the past.”

Axelrod said Biden “can be stubborn” and his “stubbornness is showing here.”