Joe Biden was begged by his son Hunter to ‘take a nap' during his busy trip to Ireland in 2023
A section in the new book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson focuses on his four-day Irish trip in April 2023, which saw him traverse the country, taking in Dublin as well as ancestral spots in Mayo and Louth.
The book – titled Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again – has direct testimony from Democratic congressman Mike Quigley who said that Biden seemed sapped of energy, leading to Hunter to plead for him to take a nap.
'You promised you wouldn't do this,' the book reports Hunter as telling his father. 'You promised you'd take a nap. You know you can't handle all this.'
Biden announced his reelection campaign a few days after the Irish trip, only to carry out a stunning reversal after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last June.
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The new book recounts Quigley and New York congressman Brian Higgins discussing Biden's health following a ceremony at Áras an Uachtaráin as part of the Ireland trip.
While they noted that Biden seemed to get an 'adrenaline boost' from performing to crowds – like his riverside address in Ballina, Co Mayo to tens of thousands – the two US politicians felt that their president's drained nature that day was similar to that of seriously unwell family members.
Higgins is quoted as saying that Biden's cognitive decline was 'evident to most people that watched him', with his health also a worried topic of discussion among Democratic officials.
Biden has strongly contested the claims that there had been a dramatic decline in his health in the latter half of his term in the White House.
On a recent episode of US TV programme The View, he denied the allegations put forward in numerous reports on his health.
'They are wrong. There's nothing to sustain that,' Biden told the programme last month.
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