Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) humiliated herself on Sunday when asked if she regretted her repeated praise of former President Joe Biden’s mental fitness, which continued until the moment he dropped out of the race. “I said what I believed to be true,” Warren said during an interview with liberal podcaster Sam Fragoso. “Look, he was sharp, he was on his feet. I saw him [at a] live event, I had meetings with him a couple of times … the question is, what are we gonna do now?”
Warren, who is best known for pretending to be Native American, was almost certainly lying.
From the moment Biden shuffled on stage at the CNN debate and bragged about beating Medicare in June 2024, there has been a steady stream of revelations about all the Democrats who were (privately) concerned or even shocked by the extent of Biden’s cognitive decline since taking office in 2021. They didn’t say anything at the time, obviously, because they didn’t want to anger the president—a notoriously vindictive narcissist—and they didn’t want to help Donald Trump by validating his attacks on Biden’s fitness for office. Two recently published books—Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, and Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History by Chris Whipple—shed even more light on the Democratic Party’s abject failure to stop Biden from running for reelection, even though many believed he was too old and cognitively impaired to serve another four years.
Now it can all be told. Here are 30 examples, based on reporting that emerged suddenly (and conveniently) after the disastrous debate had removed all doubt regarding Biden’s decline, of powerful Democrats expressing their (private) concern about the president’s age and health.
2021
1) Biden “rambled far off topic, telling unrelated stories about his days in the Senate” during a September 2021 meeting at the White House with Democratic aides and lawmakers, Allen and Parnes reported in Fight. “Some wrote it off as a sentimental trip down memory lane, while others took the departure from talks about his sweeping economic proposal as evidence that he was losing his grip.”
2022
2) In the summer of 2022, Jill Biden met with potential donors in Boston, where Bain Capital’s chairman, Joshua Bekenstein, suggested the president “could leave public life proud of a one-term legacy,” and urged Biden to “give other Democrats time to get in the race” by announcing his intention not to run again, according to a New York Times report published earlier this year. Bekenstein had been “under the impression that Mr. Biden had promised to be a one-term candidate” on account of his age. The first lady “listened but did not reply.”
3) The New York Times published a report in June 2022 based on interviews with dozens of “frustrated” Democratic lawmakers and party officials. “Nearly all” of them worried (anonymously) that Biden’s age was a “deep concern about his political viability.” These Democrats, the Times reported, have “watched as a commander in chief who built a reputation for gaffes has repeatedly rattled global diplomacy with unexpected remarks that were later walked back by his White House staff, and as he has sat for fewer interviews than any of his recent predecessors.”
4) Days later, Mark Leibovich published a column in the Atlantic urging Biden not to run again, noting the “recurring theme” he kept hearing from Democrats who supported the president. “He just seems old,” a senior administration official told Leibovich several weeks earlier.
5) Whipple, author of Uncharted, recounted that he first grew suspicious of Biden’s condition in September 2022, when he asked to interview Biden for a book about the first two years of his presidency. The interview was granted on the condition that Whipple provided the questions in advance via email so that Biden (or someone else) could answer them in writing. “It seemed clear that the president’s aides didn’t want to risk having him interact in real time with a reporter,” Whipple wrote.
2023
6) Biden used a teleprompter at a Los Angeles fundraiser in February 2023, according to the Wall Street Journal. All questions were screened in advance. Donors found this “frustrating” because they had “expected a more free-flowing exchange.”
7) John Morgan, a prominent Democratic fundraiser, told the New York Times in February 2023 that Biden’s age would be “one of the most hard-hitting arguments” against him. “It doesn’t take a genius to say, ‘Look, with his age, we have to really think about this,'” Morgan said while making the case that Biden’s age would be less of a liability if Kamala Harris wasn’t such an underwhelming replacement. “I can’t think of one thing she’s done except stay out of the way and stand beside him at certain ceremonies.”
8) A month after announcing his reelection campaign in April 2023, Biden met with “nervous New York donors” at the home of billionaire Hamilton James, the former president of Blackstone. It did not go well. “His comments [about a second term], dropped into a 35-minute stump speech that meandered from Ukraine to his childhood, were meant to reassure,” the New York Times reported in January. “But to some donors, the comments had the opposite effect. Several left with the same worries over Mr. Biden’s age that they had when they arrived. They told one another afterward that he hardly sounded like an energized, motivated candidate.”
9) Biden “made so many rambling remarks at other fund-raisers over the summer [of 2023] that several supporters called his advisers to plead for him to be more focused and on message,” according to the Times. Others worried that “the wear and tear of the presidency was taking its toll” on Biden.
10) Attendees at a June 2023 fundraiser in New York wondered if Biden “had the faculties to compete for the presidency” after he delivered a slurred speech and his “body locked up for a moment,” Allen and Parnes wrote. “It wasn’t just physical,” said a longtime acquaintance of Biden who was at the fundraiser and had “witnessed similar episodes from time to time during his presidency.” Another attendee feared that Biden “might not make it to Election Day.”
11) This may or may not have been the same New York fundraiser where Biden left attendees “struck by how fragile he seemed,” according to a Wall Street Journal report published in July 2024. At one point, Biden was unable to recall the word for “veteran,” and asked the group for help describing a person who had served in the military.
12) The Journal reported that Biden “seemed at a loss trying to answer questions about the Middle East from people in a photo line” at another New York fundraiser in June 2023. He only answered after an aide whispered in the president’s ear.
13) Biden was “frighteningly awful” at another June 2023 fundraiser in California hosted by Kevin Scott, chief technology officer at Microsoft. Bob Woodward’s latest book, War, released in October 2024, revealed that attendees likened Biden to “your 87-year-old senile grandfather wandering around the room, saying to women guests, ‘your eyes are so beautiful.'” One Democratic donor said Biden “could not wait to sit down and only took two pre-arranged questions,” but still struggled to speak coherently. The president “seemed to wander off point” despite carrying “a handful of note cards with the answers printed out.”
14) Biden delivered another “painful” performance on June 27, 2023, at a fundraiser in Maryland. “He never completed a sentence,” Democratic donor Bill Reichblum recalled. “He would start to talk about something, jump somewhere else. He told the same story three times in exactly the same way and it meandered so much … It was striking.” Woodward explained that he didn’t learn about any of these concerns from Democratic donors until after the debate in 2024.
15) Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.), who had attacked Biden for being too old as a candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary, grew “concerned about Biden’s mental acuity” in July 2023 following his interaction with the president at a White House picnic, according to Allen and Parnes. “When they came face-to-face, Biden did not immediately recognize his onetime rival for the party’s nomination,” the authors wrote in Fight. “Swalwell had to cue Biden with personal details to remind him.”
16) In Uncharted, Whipple recounted a dinner party he attended in July 2023. Guests included the elderly liberal journalists Carl Bernstein and Robert Caro, who predicted that Biden would not be the nominee in 2024 because Democratic leaders would soon “approach Joe Biden—the way Barry Goldwater and his colleagues approached Richard Nixon in 1974. And they will say, ‘Mr. President, for the good of the party and the country, we believe you should step aside.'”
17) In the summer of 2023, a former top Biden adviser “who had met with the president told an associate the meeting was ‘not good’ and that Biden had noticeably aged since they had last seen each other,” according to a Journal report published several days after the debate.
18) The Journal report also notes that, prior to the Democratic primaries, some donors expressed their concern to Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, an unofficial adviser to the White House, about “whether Biden should be the nominee, given his advanced age.” Other donors, meanwhile, “kept their concerns quiet because they didn’t want to risk their access or influence.”
19) At a New York fundraiser in September 2023, Biden “retold the same anecdote twice—leaving at least one attendee shaken and worried about his age,” the Journal reported the day after the disastrous debate.
20) At the Democratic National Committee’s fundraising retreat in September 2023, one donor asked Biden’s deputy campaign manager for advice on how to handle “the stream of concerns they’ve heard” about Biden’s age, according to Politico. Another Biden donor said they had tried to discuss concerns about Biden’s age with DNC officials, who “just refused to even acknowledge it was a problem.”
21) That same month, Hollywood megadonor Ari Emanuel confronted longtime Biden adviser Ron Klain, during a private confab in Aspen, raising doubts about Biden’s fitness for office and demanding to know: “What’s your plan B?” According to Allen and Parnes, Emanuel argued it was “grossly irresponsible for someone of Biden’s age, who is already clearly slowing down, to run for president again.” CNN wrote that the testy exchange “underscored the long-held reservations among influential Democrats about the viability of Biden months before the debate.”
22) Later that month, according to CNN, Biden spoke at the annual gala of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, where “attendees took notice of his slurring of words and at times, appearing confused. Some started to wonder: Is this more than just his stutter?”
23) At some point in 2023, Kamala Harris’s communications director Jamal Simmons “developed an entire messaging plan” to prepare for the possibility that Biden could die in office. “Anything can happen to any president, Simmons thought. But the likelihood of Biden dying is greater,” Allen and Parnes reported.
2024
24) In March, a Democratic operative who interviewed for a high-level job with the Biden campaign was shocked by the president’s demeanor. “I was like, what is happening here?” she told Whipple. “He wasn’t asking questions. It was everyone else, not him. And it felt like they were just trying to cover up that he didn’t really know what was going on.” The operative explained that the Biden campaign appeared to be struggling on account of Biden’s low energy and inability to function in public settings. “Part of their discussion on the strategy of the campaign was ‘Hey, in 2020 we had this great excuse of the basement, of COVID, to keep him out of the public eye.’ We no longer have that excuse. What do we do?'” she recalled. “They were saying, ‘He doesn’t have the energy. He can’t go on the campaign trail all the time. How do we fix that?'”
25) That same month, Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, Bill Daley, was stunned that Biden used a teleprompter at a small Saint Patrick’s Day gathering at the White House.”This is crazy,” he recalled in an interview with Whipple. Daley confronted longtime Biden aide Tom Donilon. He wanted to know why no one had spoken to Biden about stepping aside. “How are they letting this fucking thing go on?” Daley asked.
26) In May, Daley grew even more concerned after attending a Biden campaign fundraiser in Chicago. “I’ll tell you, I got rattled,” he told Whipple. “They had a receiving line, a photo line. And I had not seen the president up close in a couple of years. And I went through it with my wife—and he was friendly and all that, but he was just not the same guy.” Daley called Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, and begged him not to let the president go on stage with Trump at the CNN debate. “Do not do this,” he said. “I’m telling you, don’t do it. I’m just telling you, come up with something, but do not do it.”
27) Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi was also concerned about the debate. Biden had awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in May. Afterward, Whipple reported, she “couldn’t shake the realization that Joe Biden was a shadow of himself.”
28) Barack Obama was “shocked” but “not surprised” by Biden’s horrendous debate performance. “Obama knew from experience how the job aged a man, and he could see the effects when he watched Biden on television and in their rare joint appearances,” Allen and Parnes wrote. The former president did not share these views publicly.
29) Klain, who served as Biden’s chief of staff until 2023 and returned to help the president prepare for the CNN debate, was “startled” by Biden’s condition. According to Whipple, the longtime Democratic operative was “struck by how out of touch with American politics” Biden was, and after watching the president appear “fatigued, befuddled, and disengaged” during limited prep sessions, he “feared the debate with Trump would be a nationally televised disaster.” At one point during the debate prep sessions, Klain recalled, Biden “abruptly announced that he needed to get some sun,” then “shuffled out the door and off to the pool, where he sank into a lounge chair and fell sound asleep.” Nevertheless, Klain was one of the last remaining Democrats who insisted that Biden should stay in the race.
30) George Clooney, the Hollywood actor and Democratic donor, hosted a fundraiser for Biden in June, several days before the debate. He said nothing at the time, but Clooney was alarmed by what he saw. On July 10, nearly two weeks after the debate—when Biden’s decline could no longer be dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory—Clooney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times acknowledging what most Americans already knew. “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal Biden of 2010,” the actor wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Original News Source – Washington Free Beacon
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