Concerns have been raised recently about Joe Biden’s mental state, with his recent debate with Donald Trump raising further questions about the US President’s mental stability. A recent survey revealed that 72% of registered voters believe President Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency, further raising concerns about his cognitive state.
Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week shocked and disappointed many Democrats, but the 81-year-old president’s cognitive errors were nothing new to many of his closest aides. Biden recently took the debate stage unfiltered in front of an estimated 51 million Americans.
For years, Biden has used his blunt “look at me” response to disprove critics of his age — something Democrats and media pundits have done — to horrify them.
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Is Joe Biden’s mental health deteriorating?
The president spoke huskily onstage, something he later blamed on a cold, sometimes stumbled over questions and at other times just stared blankly into the camera.
Van Jones, a left-leaning CNN commentator, was on the verge of tears afterwards. He wasn’t the only one. Some believed the White House and Biden’s allies had misinformed about the president’s exact condition. Page Six learned from Democratic insiders that Biden’s fundraiser in the Hamptons on Saturday did little to ease fears. “It was like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound,” one veteran Democrat said, adding, “It wasn’t that he had a ‘bad’ debate, he was just clearly sick.”
Concerns about his age have long existed during his presidency, but attempts to cover them up were suddenly exposed on national television. Democrats told The Post they believe Biden’s aides may be somewhat “misinformed” about him.
“The level of paranoia is off the charts. I don’t know if the team around him sees what everyone else sees. They need to focus on getting back on track,” the Democrat said.
Are White House staff hiding the truth?
Throughout Trump’s presidency, White House officials have worked hard behind the scenes to reduce the president’s exposure to public outbursts of cognitive errors and to adapt the president’s day-to-day work to suit the demands of an octogenarian.
According to a recent Axios article, the president is believed to be prone to forgetfulness and fatigue outside of six hours a day — between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. — and while traveling internationally.
His team appears to have been forced to increase efforts over time to protect him, from taking him on walks due to concerns about his walking pace and tendency to get lost, to boarding Air Force One using shorter flights of stairs.
As mentioned in yesterday’s story, here’s a clearer video of Jill helping Biden up the stairs after the debate: https://t.co/pkxAn1s3y4 pic.twitter.com/BNYExGWrts
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) June 30, 2024
“I know many of these people and how the White House operates. They will say Joe just ‘has a cold’ or ‘is not feeling well,’ but privately for weeks and months now, they have all been saying, as we saw last night, that Joe is not doing as well as he has in years past,” Chandler West, a former deputy White House photo director under Biden, said in an Instagram Story after the debate.
“It wasn’t the first bad day of the debate, and it won’t be the last,” added the former administration official who saw the president’s behavior firsthand. “It’s time for Joe to go.”
“There is no real succession plan, and that’s what makes this not only heartbreaking but deeply problematic,” a senior Democratic campaign adviser acknowledged to CNN.
White House doctors have previously revealed that in addition to his mental health issues, the elderly president also frequently wears orthopedic shoes and undergoes physical therapy to combat stiffness.
Trump tripped over a sandbag on stage at last year’s Air Force Academy graduation ceremony and took a painful fall, but his aides are taking steps to prevent it from happening again. According to video footage from after the debate, Trump was being gently supported off the stage by his wife after a fierce 90-minute battle with former President Donald Trump (78).
Senior officials “often wouldn’t let us do anything,” a former White House official who was tasked with helping to maintain the presidential residence in the Executive Offices told Axios, suggesting this was done to keep Biden’s problems secret.
Press access to the Biden White House has also been severely restricted, and reporters who have questioned Biden’s suitability as a candidate have said campaign staff have tried to block them from speaking to rally-goers.
Biden has sometimes joked that aides have pressured him to keep his question-and-answer sessions to a minimum during his press conferences, and in September staffers could be heard signaling the end of a press conference while Biden continued to talk, apparently playing music to signal the end.
Press conference assistants were reportedly upset that First Lady Jill Biden did not step in and correct her when she made a blunder behind the scenes.
Videos circulating online of Biden going off on tangents about incomprehensible topics, making obvious grammatical errors, appearing to have trouble getting off the stage, and simply pacing around have led the White House press team to fire back at many of the videos earlier this month, criticizing The Washington Post’s reporting on some of them.
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