Democratic congressman who primaried Biden hammers party over health cover-up
Former Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., slammed the Democratic Party for allegedly covering up former President Joe Biden's decline in mental acuity in an op-ed for The Free Press on Thursday.
Phillips argued that the party's "constant lying and gaslighting" about Biden's deteriorating health has cost the Democratic Party the public's trust.
The former congressman detailed multiple instances where Biden's decline was painfully apparent to those around him, and lamented the party's leadership for allowing him to run for a second term.
"In 2021, I had a front-row seat on two occasions when he addressed the House Democratic Caucus. I also spent time in close proximity to the president during two flights on Air Force One, in 2021 and 2022, where I was alarmed to see the president's obvious decline in communication skills, gait, and leadership capacity," Phillips reported.
Phillips claimed that after attending the White House holiday party in December 2022, the president's decline was "too graphic to ignore," and he had no doubt in his mind that Biden was "unfit to serve a second term."
"My opinion wasn't an outlier," Phillips claimed. "My congressional colleagues, like me, had eyes; behind closed doors we acknowledged the reality, lamented our party leadership's inaction, and recognized the impending disaster awaiting us in November 2024."
After many hushed conversations about Biden's worsening mental acuity, Phillips decided to reach out to prominent Democrats like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Vice President Kamala Harris, to enter the race. But according to Phillips, nobody answered the call to action.
Frustrated with the leadership of his party, he decided to take matters into his own hands and enter the race himself.
"I was trying to spark a competitive primary—and at the very least to force a single, televised debate for Americans to assess the president and other candidates firsthand," Phillips said. "I simply wanted Americans to see up close what I had seen and what the White House was trying to hide from them, and before it was too late."
Phillips claimed that his efforts to primary Biden were met by stiff opposition from Democratic leadership, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries' chief of staff informing him that he "would not be speaking to Biden or anyone else in the White House" after making a courtesy call to inform Jeffries that he planned on running against the sitting president.
The former congressman also alleged that the media played a large role in preventing him from being listed on the ballot in 2024.
"Almost immediately, the party mechanism was activated, and I became persona non grata. The media, in particular MSNBC, where former Biden staffers wielded positions of influence—essentially deplatformed me and those supporting me," Phillips claimed. "Party activists, paid and volunteer, took to social media to attack and discredit me."
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) allegedly took steps to "keep anyone not named Biden from being on the ballot, forcing Phillips and his team to file multiple lawsuits.
"This wasn't a fight for democracy, rather a coordinated fight against democracy—executed by a private corporation with no accountability to voters," he asserted.
Phillips contended that Biden was surrounded by family and advisors who assured him that he was "popular, able, and the best candidate to take on Donald Trump."
"And where did it get us? All those months of carefully guarding the president, prewriting his speeches, prerecording his interviews?" Phillips questioned. "In the end, the only unscripted, significant event President Biden did during his campaign was the [June] 2024 debate that was an unmitigated disaster. His entire campaign crumbled in the most humiliating way possible."
Although Phillips had a multitude of criticisms for his party and those leading it, he did mention that the Democratic Party can still redeem itself.
"The first step is for everyone that was aware of Biden's condition to come clean. No more evasions. No more insistence that he was sharp when you met him. The whole truth will come out, and they would be wise to get ahead of it," he advised.
Phillips continued, proposing an intriguing question: "If a relatively little-known congressman like me knew that Biden was incapable of leading the country in a second term, what does that say about the complicity of the real party bosses whose names we all know?"
In conclusion, the former Democratic representative offered his party some advice on moving forward after the scandal.
"Protecting a president or institution at the cost of its credibility is a shortsighted and losing proposition. Democratic leaders and messengers must understand that sunlight is not our enemy, but rather the only way to earn the public's confidence in our party," he concluded.
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