How Biden’s Inner Circle Keeps His Mental Decline from voters: An Analysis of the Book by Chuck Schumer (The View)
I talked to his pollsters more than any other time, and they did not think that was true. When Chuck Schumer finally has the conversation with Biden in which he says that he thinks Biden should drop out. He says that he talked to the pollsters. You have a 5% chance of winning. And Biden did not know that because all the polling was interpreted through the spinmeisters around him, Donilon and [Steve] Ricchetti, and Biden’s shocked to hear that. According to one of the pollsters, 5% was probably more like 1%.
Tapper: He still thinks that. He believes he could have won. He went on The View to prebutt this book, we think. He was asked about it. And he said, “Well, look, I still got 7 million more votes than Donald Trump.”
“He can do it. He’s a game day performer. He’ll do it.” He became the best vice president in history after everybody wrote him off. Everybody wrote him off in 2019, 2020 and then he beat Donald Trump. And he’s the only one that’s ever beaten Donald Trump. That theology took root. It’s the theology of the President of the United States. And who is anybody to challenge that?
“Get up” is what his father used to say, according to one of his memoirs. And that’s the way you measure a man, your ability to get up. And that became not just a mythology, but almost a theology. Analyzing theology, skepticism was not allowed. That’s the circle of Biden.
He has had a remarkable ability to get up after being knocked to the floor by fate, whether it’s having a debilitating stutter or the horrific tragedy that took the life of his wife and daughter or having two brain aneurysms etc., etc.
Source: This new book explores how Biden’s inner circle kept his mental decline from voters
Joe Biden’s Inner Circle Keeps His Mental Decline From Voters: A New Book Exploring the Failure of the White House Internal Scheduling
The legend of Joe Biden is the subject of a chapter in the book. I don’t mean in a negative way, but the mythology of Joe Biden is what I mean.
The White House official said it was because they didn’t know the extent of the decline. You also saw the schedule become much tighter and more restricted.
Thompson: The one top aide who left the White House said that they intentionally shielded him from other members of the administration, other members of the cabinet, other senior White House officials. The inner circle decreased in size.
You were talking about the cover up. He’s giving speeches. He’s appearing in public. He is carrying out the duties of the presidency. You reported that there was a concerted effort to wall him off. What was going on with that circle of aides?
When he didn’t recognize George Clooney. He had been friends with that person for more than a decade and he was co-hosting that fundraiser because he had raised millions of dollars for him. He’s one of the most well-known people in the world. I’m talking about that. I am talking about the non- functioning, I- cannot-articulate-a sentence Biden that we saw at the debate.
Source: This new book explores how Biden’s inner circle kept his mental decline from voters
Where are we? What do we forget about the Biden’s elders when we aren’t talking about his term in 2020?
We’re talking about to the point of you not being able to have a conversation. You are not able to come up with data, information, knowledge, names that you should have at the ready.
Tapper: I would describe it as unable to come up with the names of top advisers or close friends. I would say look, we’re all human. We all forget names. All of us lose a train of thought. We all witness that in people who are aging.
The authors call out a close circle of top Biden aides — Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, among others — for insisting either that the president was fine or that his health was not a major problem. When Biden was running in 2019 and 2020, senior aides treated his age “as simply a political vulnerability, not a serious limitation on his abilities,” Tapper and Thompson write. They thought a reduced Biden would be better than Trump’s redux. “Biden, his family and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify an attempt to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years,” the authors write.
Thompson: If it wasn’t a cover up, then why were so many people surprised by the debate? In the fall of 2023, our report shows that there were two Bidens, one functional and one non-functional. That goes back to the beginning of 2019. He was almost always on top of Biden.
Even today, the inner inner circle still thinks he could have won, still thinks that he could have been functioning and doing a great job as president until January 2029. It’s just delusion at this point. We can see it. We talked to a top democrat who thought he wasn’t up to par. He wasn’t on top of things. This is a guy that has been in the public eye. He’s been in the public eye since 1972. So, we have seen him age.
He had been aging since we all saw him. We had all seen him tripping and misspeaking. We had all seen evidence of decline, but the Biden team, family and senior advisors were telling everybody, not just media and not just the public, but also Democratic donors and members of Congress: “He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.”
“Holy Smokes”: How Biden and Donilon Metastasized to a Bone in the First Preliminary Election
The only time we could talk to the control room was when there were only one or two commercial breaks, and we didn’t have an iPad. And I wrote, “Holy Smokes,” during that first rambling, awful non-answer where he said, “We finally beat Medicare.” I just did not believe it.
The upcoming book comes as Biden’s personal office announced in a statement Sunday that he has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer, which has metastasized to the bone. Biden, 82, was seen for further tests last week after a finding of a prostate nodule.
The authors of the book, Jake Tapper and John Thompson, sat down with All Things Considered host Scott Detrow to discuss the process of writing the book and why they decided to publish it now.
What is the issue? The two had known each other since 1981, with Donilon serving as one of Biden’s closest aides for decades and at one point had a White House desk just steps away from the Oval Office.
Biden is on a campaign swing in Iowa. During the event, Biden struggles to remember the names of one of his aides, Mike Donilon.
In an authors’ note, Tapper and Thompson highlight the book’s 200 sources — lots of lawmakers and campaign and administration insiders — most of whom agreed to talk to them only after the election. Some of them regretted not doing more, or that they had waited so long. People were angry and felt betrayed not only by Biden but by his circle of advisers, his allies and his family. The losing side usually have guilt, blame and not my-fault-ism in campaign books.
“Original Sin” is not definitive on when Biden’s diminishment began, except to say that signs were frequent and spanned several years, often seeming to worsen around periods of family turmoil. The president’s eldest son died in 2015, so it began. “Beau’s death wrecked him,” one senior White House aide tells the authors. Part of him died, but never returned after Beau died. The later legal troubles surrounding Biden’s son Hunter — particularly the collapse of a 2023 deal on tax and gun charges — also proved an “inflection point,” Tapper and Thompson write, citing Biden aides, “where the president suddenly and steeply declined.”
These are just a few of the copious examples Tapper and Thompson report, all in advance of Biden’s halting and confused performance in his debate with Trump on June 27, 2024. “What the world saw at his one and only 2024 debate was not an anomaly,” Tapper and Thompson write. “It was not a cold; it was not someone who was underprepared or overprepared. Someone who was a little tired was not that person.