Credibility crisis: White House reporters speak out on whether Biden's mental decline was deliberately hidden

Yahoo

27-05-2025

White House reporters who covered the Biden administration are speaking out about whether they were duped into thinking the president was mentally fit for office and if West Wing staffers attempted to hide the truth from Americans.
CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson's "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," was released on Tuesday and has created plenty of chatter among the White House press corps while putting the issue back at the forefront. The book details Joe Biden's mental acuity concerns while in office, accusing the Biden White House of lying to reporters and voters.
Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy responded by posting multiple videos to X showing him questioning Biden and the White House about the then-president's cognitive decline, only to be quickly dismissed. Other White House reporters found it odd that CNN is tied to the book, while some had strong feelings about whether there was truly a "cover-up."
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One White House reporter truly believes the White House clearly tried to hide the truth from everyone.
"This was a cover-up by any definition, but a quixotic one for the Biden team to have undertaken, for at the end of the day, there is only so much a White House staff can do to shield the President of the United States from exposure to the press and public. The cover-up had both private and public-facing dimensions," the second White House reporter told Fox News Digital.
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The reporter said the private dimensions included "secretive strategizing and decision-making," while the public strategy featured "brazen lies" such as video of Biden appearing confused being chalked up as "cheapfakes" and "the silencing of reporters who pressed the issue early on."
Doocy, and a handful of other bold reporters, were regularly shut down by press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if they dared to ask about the president's fitness for office.
"The subject that was denounced as so rude and fringe-y to ask about back then eventually emerged as the defining issue of the Biden presidency," the White House reporter said.
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A second White House reporter echoed the thoughts of "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, who on Monday blasted CNN for relentlessly promoting "a book about news they should've told you was news a year ago for free."
"Sources are always more eager to talk after the fact, but it's not a good look that CNN -- a heavy hitter with plenty of weight to challenge the White House as the decline happened -- barely scratched the surface of the story that Tapper now reports," the second White House reporter told Fox News Digital.
"Late work still deserves half credit though," they added.
A third White House reporter initially believed the 82-year-old Biden was merely aging, or perhaps suffering from COVID side effects, and doesn't think the press is culpable.
"You know, it's one of those things; the guy is old. He speaks like an old person, and it's getting more pronounced as time goes by," the third White House reporter said of Biden.
"I noticed, personally, a dramatic difference between when he took office and the start of the second year. I suspected, and wondered, if it might be because of COVID and the aftereffects of COVID. He had it twice, I think… I know it's been reported that a brain fog kind of thing can happen after you've had it. I left it at that," they continued. "I remember a very different Joe Biden in 2014, 2015. He was a decade younger, so that makes sense."
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The third White House reporter "doesn't get" the notion that journalists should have been able to uncover the truth about his declining health at the moment.
"How? How exactly do you report that? If you're a White House reporter, you have responsibilities to explain what happened that day. Like in any White House, there is usually something happening every single day," they said, noting that reporting on Biden's mental acuity concerns would be a major enterprise story.
"People are not going to confirm medical stuff at all, not likely going to tell you what he's like in private… or in Wilmington, because it makes him look bad," they said. "Now, the Biden White House didn't leak. It just didn't, so if you want to go after that story, you're going to spend weeks on it, and you may not get anything. In the meantime, you're not doing other things."
That same White House reporter is "puzzled" that Jean-Pierre has taken so much heat for regularly insisting Biden was fit for office.
"To the extent that she says, 'He's more energetic than I am,' that's just silly, and she probably shouldn't have said that. On the other hand, to have her come out and say, 'Oh, no, no he's actually incapable of doing the job and ought to resign,' that's not realistic," the White House reporter said, adding that Jean-Pierre and other top Biden staffers had skin in the game.
"I mean, come on, you cannot expect the chief of staff to say, 'This guy cannot do the job,'" they said.
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The third White House reporter isn't sure Biden's age impacted his job performance and believes a lot of his shortcomings were simply "policy issues."
"What would he have done much differently if he was younger? I don't know," they said. "Until you can show me that he did bad things because he wasn't up to the job at that moment, you know, I take it with a grain of salt."
Margaret Chadbourn covers the White House as a Cheddar correspondent, with a seat in the briefing room, and is a WHCA member. She believes the entire Biden saga has hurt trust in the media because Americans are asking what was missed, and why it was missed.
"Reporters need to do some soul-searching, maybe, perhaps, and question did they cover Biden the way they should have, through the lens they should have, asking the questions they should have, taking the facts and putting them together, or should they have looked for more facts," Chadbourn told Fox News Digital.
"Should they have done more research?," Chadbourn continued. "I just think there is a whole timeline that the media and reporters need to look through, not just Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson writing a book."
Chadbourn, who has been covering Biden on and off since 2005, said he was always affable and always "came alive interacting with voters." But as his legacy is defined, she believes there is anger among Americans over what people perceive as "misinformation about his health."
"Not as a media critic, but as a journalist, a political reporter, we need to see what was there that we perhaps missed," Chadbourn said.
The first White House reporter who spoke anonymously believes the truth will eventually come out.
"We will learn more about all this as time goes by: first, in aides' memoirs, where they will, for money, traffic the pitiable incidents and sad details they knew about at the time, and helped conceal; and secondly, through archival disclosure, as we get our hands on the White House memoranda, emails, and texts that will show the day-to-day mechanics of the cover-up—and maybe answer the question of who was running the country," the reporter told Fox News Digital.Original article source: Credibility crisis: White House reporters speak out on whether Biden's mental decline was deliberately hidden