How Biden’s Inner Circle Managed His Decline

This was all so predictable. It was clear years ago that Biden’s decline was worse than the White House wanted to admit. And as the evidence kept adding up, it was clear the people around him were lying.

As Chris Cillizza admitted last month, the White House was working very hard to discourage the media from looking into this and for the most part the media just went along with it.

But in addition it was also clear that, at some point in the not so distant future, the truth would come out. And so it has. Today the NY Times published another now it can be told story that they should have published six months ago. Instead they waited until Biden had nothing left to lose. It’s titled, “How Biden’s Inner Circle Protected a Faltering President.”

“Your biggest issue is the perception of age,” Mike Donilon, the president’s longtime strategist, told him in mid-2022, according to three close aides who heard it…

Mr. Biden acknowledged the concerns, but the warnings only ignited his defiant, competitive streak. In April 2023, without convening his family or having long deliberations with aides, he announced he was running again.

But Biden’s aides all worked together to back up his decision even though they knew he couldn’t possibly do another four years.

…they recognized his physical frailty to a greater degree than they have publicly acknowledged. Then they cooperated, according to interviews with more than two dozen aides, allies, lawmakers and donors, to manage his decline.

They rearranged meetings to make sure Mr. Biden was in a better mood — a strategy one person close to him described as how aides should handle any president. At times, they delayed sharing information with him, including negative polling data, as they debated the best way to frame it. They surrounded him with aides when he walked from the White House to the waiting presidential helicopter on the South Lawn so that news cameras could not capture his awkward bearing.

They had Mr. Biden use a teleprompter for even small fund-raisers in private homes, alarming donors, who were asked to provide questions beforehand. They came up with replacing the grand steps that presidents use to board Air Force One with a shorter set that led directly into the belly of the plane. They chastised White House correspondents for coverage of the president’s age.

And despite all of the precautions, donors who got to see the president up close were very concerned.

The president made so many rambling remarks at other fund-raisers over the summer that several supporters called his advisers to plead for him to be more focused and on message. Others who saw Mr. Biden thought the wear and tear of the presidency was taking its toll.

There’s more but you probably saw most of it when it happened: He tripped on stage and fell off a bike. His gave word salad answers and confused world leaders. Behind the scenes there was panic each time these things happened. They knew it was bad and they tried their best to hide it. 

Biden’s wife and son were apparently leading that effort along with his top aides. But as we all know the Big Lie about his condition backfired during the first debate. That’s not when he lost, he was already heading for a loss before that, but it is when the White House could no longer maintain the lie.

There are a few good comments including this one:

I will never forgive those who allowed this coverup to persist.  Americans deserve the truth, no matter what.  I HATE to be lied to and HATE to be gaslighted.  And what did they hope to achieve, to maybe bring a man into a second term when he was not well enough to hold the office?

Another one:

In the context of all of the post-election analysis of why Democrats lost this “inner circle” of enablers needs to shoulder the most blame. There were a lot of reasons for what happened in November, but flat-out lying to the public about what anybody could see happening was really fundamental to the narrative of an out-of-touch elitist Democratic Party.

Democrats are angry.

This makes me really, really angry. 

The news that even at small,  private events, donos had to submit questions ahead of time and that Joe’s remarks, the questions and the answers wwere all fed to him by teleprompter is just outrageous.

That makes it quite clear that Joe, at a bare minimum, was not consistently capable of intelligent interaction with even small groups of people for a limited time in what were essentially social settings.

Schumer, Jeffries et al had to know these things. They had to.

This is just a huge scandal. And it has foisted Trump 2.0 on the nation and the world.

The White House lied to Americans for four years. They got caught and they paid a price. What’s really shocking is how close they came to getting away with this scheme. What would have happened if Biden had squeaked out a half-decent performance at that first debate? I think he still would have lost the election but the fact that he was barely competent and almost made it to election day is incredible. Will the media ever hold themselves accountable for this epic failure? I think we all know the answer.