Ex-CNN journalist speaks out on Biden cover-up, says White House aides made it difficult on press
Former CNN journalist Chris Cillizza admitted there is "ample evidence" former President Joe Biden's aides covered up his cognitive decline by shaming reporters and making it uncomfortable to seek the truth.
Cilizza, who previously served as CNN's editor-at-large and now has his own Substack, opened up about his experience as the media industry reckons with the notion it failed to cover Biden's declining health until his frail debate showing last June that led to him exiting the 2024 presidential race.
"I think there is now ample evidence that there was a cover-up on Joe Biden's actual physical and mental condition by his aides in the White House. There's been a ton of reporting on it… too much, I think, to dismiss it," Cillizza told Fox News Digital in an email.
While Cillizza believes Biden aides were hiding the truth from the American people, the former CNN political analyst doesn't believe the press was part of the cover-up.
"Instead, I think the Biden team made it really hard to ask questions about his health — they shamed you, said you didn't like him, etc.," Cillizza said, noting that many reporters, including himself, "let that be that."
Cillizza doesn't believe President Donald Trump's team would receive the same treatment from the mainstream press. He feels that some reporters took the Biden team's word for it because they were either more "inclined to believe a Democratic president," or were likely to believe "someone who hadn't said 30,000 false or misleading things while in office."
Cillizza has been outspoken about the ordeal in recent weeks and recently released a video titled, "Why it *still* matters that the media missed the big Biden story," where he reflected on how Axios' Alex Thompson used his award speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner to "call out how both the Biden White House and the media mishandled President Biden's cognitive decline during the 2024 election."
Cillizza said there is a high bar to directly report that Biden had dementia or some similar condition, which he believes wasn't met.
"The fact that I do not believe there was any coordinated cover-up by the media of Joe Biden's condition, that does not get us media off the hook," he said.
"The media should have asked more questions about Joe Biden I should have asked more questions about Joe Biden and his health," Cillizza continued. "We should have dug harder."
Last year, Cillizza offered a mea culpa for shrugging off concerns about Biden's fitness for office.
"As a reporter, I have a confession to make… I should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden's mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline," he said in a video posted to YouTube.
Cillizza acknowledged that Republicans would regularly contact him during his time at CNN, asking him why he hadn't addressed Biden's decline and how he would "brush them off" since he had not seen evidence of it.
"The White House and the people around Joe Biden were absolutely adamant that suggesting anything- asking the question about whether he was in some physical, mental or both decline, was offensive. 'How could you? It's age shaming.' And I think that impacted me at some level," Cillizza said.
"While I did ask the question from time to time… I didn't really push on it, if I'm being honest. Now, once I left CNN and once it became a little bit more clear to me about Biden's age, I think I did write pretty regularly and talk pretty regularly about how I wasn't sure that this guy was up to it," he added. "And then obviously, after the June 27 debate, everybody, including me, was writing and talking about it."
Fox News Digital reached out to a Biden representative for comment.
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