A new poll shows that a staggering 72% of voters believe President Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency, raising further questions about President Biden’s cognitive status.
While Biden’s debate gaffes last week stunned and confused many Democrats, the 81-year-old president’s cognitive gaffes are nothing new to his aides.
White House aides have worked meticulously behind the scenes throughout Trump’s presidency to minimize his exposure to public outbursts of cognitive missteps and to adapt the day-to-day workings of the presidency to the needs of the octogenarian president.
The commander-in-chief is seen as more vulnerable to slip-ups and fatigue outside of his six-hour day (10am to 4pm) and when traveling overseas. Axios said in a new report:.
His team has reportedly been forced to step up efforts over time to protect him, from shortening the steps required to board Air Force One to offering guided walks amid concerns about his walking style and tendency to get lost.
“I know many of these people and how the White House operates,” Chandler West, a former deputy White House photography director under Biden, said in an Instagram Story after the debate. Axios reported.
“They’ll say he ‘had a cold’ or ‘wasn’t feeling well,’ but for weeks and months, everyone has said privately, as we saw last night, that Joe just isn’t as strong as he was a few years ago,” West said.
“The debate wasn’t the first bad day, and it won’t be the last,” said a former administration staffer who witnessed the president’s behavior firsthand.
“It’s time for Joe to go.”
The problem is that “there is no real succession plan,” a senior Democratic campaign adviser acknowledged to CNN. “That’s what makes this not only heartbreaking, but deeply problematic.”
The White House disputed those assessments of Biden’s intellectual acuity.
“Not only does the president work around the clock, he maintains a schedule that would exhaust any junior advisor, including overseas trips to combat zones, and yet he has proven he can do it by producing tangible results that experts said were impossible,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.
Bates cited NATO expansion, “out-selling China to bring manufacturing back home” and “out-negotiating with Republican officials who want to impose recessionary MAGAnomics policies and radical abortion bans” as evidence Biden can get the job done.
In addition to mental health issues, the aging president Reportedly White House doctors say he frequently wears orthopedic shoes and undergoes physical therapy to reduce muscle stiffness. Previously disclosed.
Ever since he tripped over a sandbag on stage at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony last year and fell and suffered serious injuries, aides have been working closely to prevent a recurrence.
Footage from the post-debate showed the president, supported by his wife, slowly walking off the stage after a fiery 90-minute battle with former President Donald Trump, 78.
A former White House staffer who was tasked with helping look after the president’s accommodations in the Executive Office Building told Axios that senior officials often “wouldn’t let us do anything,” suggesting it was to keep Biden’s problems secret.
“In every administration, there are people who would prefer to spend more time with the president and senior officials,” Bates said, praising Biden for his “determination, values and experience that have enabled him to achieve historic results for the American people.”
Press access to the Biden White House has also been significantly restricted.
Three and a half years into his presidency, Biden has held fewer solo news conferences than any president since at least the late 1980s, despite several bitter wars, a migrant border crisis and economic turmoil. According to the data From the American President Project.
Moreover, he rarely gives face-to-face interviews to the press, although a rare one published in Time magazine earlier this month featured a series of factual gaffes, including confusing Chinese President Xi Jinping with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I’ve been very critical of the campaign strategy and the White House and their decision last year to kind of wrap Mr. Trump in bubble wrap. You can’t run for president by hunkering down and hiding,” Michael LaRosa, the first lady’s former press secretary, recently complained on Fox News’ “Media Buzz.”
Several The reporter claims Biden campaign officials have tried to discourage him from speaking to rally-goers who question the wisdom of making him the nominee.
Biden sometimes I told a joke Regarding his officials’ request to limit question-and-answer sessions during press interviews. I heard he spoke to the press As Biden continued to ramble on, the meeting was signaled to be over, and staff apparently played music to signal the end.
Behind the scenes, First Lady Jill Biden Reportedly He sharply criticized aides for not shortening the press conference where Biden made the gaffe.
Flashback: White House outraged by ‘cheap fakery’
Videos have circulated online of Biden making hard-to-understand asides, making obvious verbal errors, appearing to struggle while walking off stage or simply milling around aimlessly.
Earlier this month, the White House press team launched a concerted effort to refute many of these videos and slammed The Washington Post’s reporting on some of them.
At the root of the White House’s frustration was concern that the footage was heavily edited and lacked full context, thereby painting an unfair picture of him as infirm.
They called the clips “cheap fakes.”
The motive was clear: The White House was trying to dispel troubling rumors about Biden’s age that have long dogged his presidency.
Biden allayed many concerns with an energetic performance during his State of the Union address in March (standing behind a teleprompter), and the goal was to get him to do it again.
‘look at me’
On Thursday, Biden took the debate stage unfiltered, with an estimated 51 million Americans watching.
Biden has long tried to prove his age opponents wrong with a simple “look at me” retort, and that’s exactly what media pundits and Democrats have done. And then they got so upset, they panicked.
The president spoke hoarsely onstage (he later blamed a cold), struggled at times to produce coherent answers and stared blankly into the camera at other speakers.
CNN liberal analyst Van Jones was close to tears afterwards, and he wasn’t the only one to feel that way.
Some felt they had been misled by the White House and Biden’s allies about the exact status of the president’s condition.
“This is no longer about Joe Biden’s family or his feelings,” a White House official said. Furious at Axios“This is a national issue. This is an absolute disaster that needs to be dealt with.”
“There will be consequences.”
Democratic insider He told Page Six Biden’s fundraiser in the Hamptons on Saturday did little to ease concerns.
“It was like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound,” one veteran Democrat said. “It wasn’t that his debate was ‘bad,’ he just plain didn’t look good.”
Concerns about his age have long dogged his presidency, but now attempts to hide it on national television have failed.
Some Democrats told The Washington Post they believe Biden’s aides have a degree of “paranoia” about him.
“The level of paranoia is off the charts,” the Democrat said. “I don’t know if the team around him sees what everyone else sees. They need to focus on getting back on track.”
Outside the United States, there were also concerns among some allies who had rooted for Biden to win the presidential election on November 5. But even before the debate, concerns about Biden’s mental health had emerged abroad.
“He ended the meeting with the same anecdote he started it with,” the person said. He told the Financial Times He noted that Biden’s recent meetings with EU leaders initially left a sharp impression.
“Everyone’s hearts sank.”
It was Biden’s team that first proposed the debate to Trump, but he quickly accepted on terms that some of his allies felt were unfavorable. He later explained that he thought the offer was a ploy to get him to turn it down.
Cleaning duty
Senior Democratic figures, including Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, have urged the party to calm down.
“I think it’s unhelpful and I think it’s unnecessary,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom complained to MSNBC after the debate about his fears of keeping Biden at the top of his party.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 84, and Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-South Carolina, 83, both gave news interviews on Sunday to try to allay concerns about Biden.
LaRosa thought about X.“Is this a smart proxy strategy? Sending an 83-year-old onto a cable show today to advocate for an 81-year-old candidate?”
Clyburn acknowledged that Biden’s debate performance was “bad,” but said part of the blame was on being overprepared.
“I’ve been involved in debate preparations before, and I know what happens when there’s what’s called over-preparedness,” Clyburn said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Pelosi tried to defend Biden by attacking Trump.
“There are medical experts who believe that Trump has dementia,” Pelosi argued on “State of the Union.” “Not only is he inconsistent, but he just lies.”
Biden himself acknowledged the difficulties he faced at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Thursday night, saying he personally felt humiliated and “low on confidence.” NBC reported.
Pessimistic polls
Early post-debate polls suggest confidence in Biden is wavering.
A whopping 72% CBS News/YouGov Poll Respondents Among Democrats, 41% said they don’t think Biden has the “mental and cognitive health necessary to serve as president.”
But as the Biden campaign noted in a recent fundraising memo, enthusiasm for alternative candidates isn’t particularly strong either.
Deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty cited a Data for Progress poll that showed Trump beat all the major Democratic candidates, but highlighted Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as having the highest approval ratings.
Biden is expected to be crowned the Democratic presidential nominee in the coming weeks, roughly ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
His team insists he will definitely go ahead with the debate with Trump scheduled for September.
The White House did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on Sunday.
