Latest news with #Fight:InsidetheWildestBattlefortheWhiteHouse
New York Post
20-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Jill Biden's role propping up Joe through his presidency can't be ignored as questions over his cancer diagnosis swirl
As the anatomy of the great Joe Biden cover-up emerges, one dark figure stands menacingly taller than the rest. That would be Vogue cover girl Dr. Jill Biden, who is starting to look more like Dr. Evil — a cartoonishly terrible, power hungry and reckless movie villain — every day. This week, as Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's devastating book 'Original Sin' detailing the Dem's elaborate cover up of the 46th President's infirmity as he ran — or, ahem, as he was run — for a second shot at the White House, Biden dropped a bombshell prostate cancer diagnosis. Advertisement The timing was undoubtedly meant to shift sympathy to the family and soften the atomic boom of the scandal. 6 Former President Joe Biden appeared on 'The View' with his wife Jill Biden as stories of a 2024 cover up emerged. The View/ABC While terribly sad, the stage of the disease and timing of the disclosure has only raised more questions and opened up more rabbit holes. Advertisement As many top doctors have said, his particular numbers suggested something more alarming: Biden has likely been battling cancer for a long time. Yet during the 2024 race, many in the White House and the media closed ranks around him, telling us that he was 'cogent' or that his age was his 'superpower,' as the LA Times wrote. A farce made possible only with the help of Jill, who kept the show going to the detriment of her husband and the country. 6 Vogue's August issue with Jill Biden dropped just after his disasterous debate performance. Norman Jean Roy/Vogue Advertisement That Trump DOJ official Leo Terrell even suggested the former First Lady face criminal charges for 'elder abuse.' Jill betrayed her duty not only to her husband but the American voters to pull the plug on the elaborate and terrible charade that the man was not only fit, he was running circles around the youngins'. Meanwhile, he wasn't capable of running bingo night at the community center, never mind being the leader of the free world. That guy should have been licking vanilla ice cream cones and telling his grandkids war stories about Corn Pop out on the back porch. Advertisement The former president, like any human, deserved dignity. But because of Jill and the party's greed, her husband will be not be remembered as a once vigorous politician with the gift of gab — and a bizarre penchant for sniffing hair. Our lasting image of him will instead be of a confused and doddering old man. 6 Joe Biden was sworn in as president in 2021 with Jill Biden by his side. REUTERS And she has been there every step of the way – holding the controls. She propped up a sick man she vowed to love and cherish, so she and their ne'er do well son could remain physically close to the hand of power and the DC gravy train that kept their bank accounts flush. Apparently, her tastes are acquired. In 'Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,' released last month the authors described Jill's reluctance to join the Beltway gaggle. She reportedly discouraged her husband from running for president in 2004. However, 'after eight years as the second lady and nearly two more as the first lady, the trappings of the most elite levels of Washington power had grown on her,' wrote the authors. 6 Jill Biden leads her husband off the debate stage after he appeared confused and extremely elderly. Getty Images Advertisement Once there, she received the celebratory coddling that is reserved for Dems and their spouses: fawning fashion profiles, magazine covers and a slobbering press corps demanding the world refer to her as doctor. But need we play shocked about Tapper and Thompson's revelations? We knew. And we knew they knew. Anyone with a pulse could see that Biden was not only diminished but decaying before our very eyes. He was shuffling, falling, toppling over on his bike. When asked for comment in 2023 as Maui burned into an apocalyptic movie set, he offered 'no comment' to those poor souls who lost everything. We saw Jill lead her empty husk of a husband off the debate stage as she slipped into her patronizing teacher voice and addressed the president like he was a toddler learning his colors and numbers. Advertisement 6 In August 2021, Jill Biden was featured on the cover of Vogue. 'Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question,' she said. Two weeks ago, she was even his companion on the 'The View,' which underscored his need for a chaperone and her own appetite for the spotlight. Tapper has caught a lot of well-deserved heat for writing his book so soon after preserving the lie that Biden was just a sympathetic figure battling a stutter. That ol' chestnut. Advertisement But his reporting has provided even more disturbing specifics. Biden's 'halting walk' had become so bad 'there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election,' read an excerpt. It's possible to wish Biden well, pray for his comfort, his strength and his body to respond well to treatment. But one cannot separate the role his inner circle and family played in trying to play the American people. 6 Naomi Biden in her Ralph Lauren wedding dress posed with her grandmother Jill Biden for Vogue. Norman Jean Roy / Vogue Throughout her public career, former First Lady Jill regularly relied on the word 'compassion,' sprinkling it throughout her speeches. Advertisement And in her 2020 DNC address she said her husband can heal the nation, 'with love and understanding – and with small acts of compassion.' Ironically, she has been unable to offer that very same compassion to her own ailing husband.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Democrats can't escape questions about Biden despite cancer diagnosis
Former President Biden's cancer diagnosis has done little to quell concerns about his decision to run for reelection, and many in the party acknowledge the issue is likely to dog them as they look toward 2028. The announcement on Sunday that Biden had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer came as Democrats have been reckoning with renewed concerns over his mental acuity and whether he should have dropped out of the presidential race sooner last year. While the news of Biden's illness was met with an outpouring of condolences from both sides of the aisle, it also sparked new questions surrounding the Biden team's handling of his health and underscored the degree to which scrutiny over the former president will persist through the next White House election. 'I think Democrats, whoever they are, need to be ready for this question,' Democratic strategist Maria Cardona said of attention on Biden's 2024 decisions. But, especially in light of the former president's diagnosis, 'it does the Democratic Party, nor the American people, nor the country we're fighting for, any good for us to dwell on this,' Cardona said. 'So let's answer the question, and let's move on.' Prior to the announcement, several top Democrats seen as potential 2028 hopefuls were hit with questions about the end of Biden's presidency, with many of them coming closer to acknowledging Biden's weaknesses than most prominent Democrats had in the past. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told an Iowa town hall that his then-boss's decision to run for reelection 'maybe' hurt Democrats last year, though he encouraged the party not 'to wallow in hindsight.' Asked whether Biden experienced cognitive decline in office, Buttigieg said that 'every time I needed something from him and from the West Wing, I got it.' Taking a sharper stance on the acuity question, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told Politico there's 'no doubt' Biden suffered cognitive decline and contended it was 'self-evident' Biden not running would have been better for the party. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) also told CNN last week that talk of Biden's health is 'backward-looking,' but conceded Biden should have either remained the 2024 nominee or dropped out before the primaries. 'To rebuild trust, Democrats must be honest. In light of the facts that have come out, Joe Biden should not have run for reelection, and we should have had an open primary,' Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), another Democrat who has spurred 2028 chatter, posted on the social platform X last week. The questions came as revelations from new books have painted a bleak picture of the end of Biden's term. In 'Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,' The Hill's Amie Parnes and NBC News's Jonathan Allen reported Democratic Party officials and White House staffers were well aware of Biden's frailties, taking steps to hide signs of aging and make contingency plans. Excerpts from 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,' a new book from CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios's Alex Thompson, spotlight similar efforts, including scripted Cabinet meetings and multiple cameras to cover flubs. 'The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us,' former first lady Jill Biden said in an appearance last week on 'The View,' where the Bidens pushed back against concerns stemming from the books. 'Original Sin' published Tuesday, just days after Biden's team announced his diagnosis. Political strategist David Axelrod, who was one of the earliest Democratic voices raising concerns about Biden's health ahead of 2024, said Sunday the diagnosis should tamp down discussions about the end of Biden's term, though he acknowledged the scrutiny is likely to persist with the release of 'Original Sin.' 'I think those conversations are going to happen, but they should be more muted and set aside for now as he's struggling through this,' said Axelrod, who was an adviser to former President Obama, on CNN. Michael Ceraso, a Democratic strategist who's worked on four presidential campaigns, disagreed with Axelrod's call. 'If there are stories, and there have been stories, about any type of health being concealed … I think we should be talking about: What does that look like, when it comes to our relationship between the presidency and the voters?' Ceraso said. 'What happened with Biden, if his team did what has been accused of them of doing, this is a legit conversation no different, in my mind, than if you're saying, 'Well, Trump is spewing misinformation,' and you're fact-checking the president,' he added. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who initially challenged Biden for the nomination last year, suggested the cancer announcement was timed purposefully to deflect criticism of the former president. 'I don't think it's coincidental that this was announced this week,' Phillips told The New York Times in an interview published Monday. Figures on the right were quick to raise new suspicions about Biden following his diagnosis. 'Whether the right time to have this conversation is now or at some point in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job,' Vice President Vance said while offering wishes for recovery. Remarks from Vance and others signal that Republicans will continue to hammer Democrats over Biden, keeping the issue at the fore for potential 2028 leaders. 'It'll be a question about who was lying, and when were they lying, and how significant was the lie,' said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. 'The Trump forces within the Republican Party … their move is to go after the Democrats for being untruthful, for lying and putting the nation at risk with a president who was potentially not capable of doing the job.' Across the aisle, Democrats 'universally are sad' about the former president's health, said Matt Bennett of the center-left think tank Third Way, and that's served to 'mitigate some of the anger' from the books and his return to the spotlight. Lingering questions may put some candidates, especially those closer to the former president, in a 'slightly awkward spot,' but 2024 questions are not likely to be 'campaign-defining,' argued Bennett, who worked on former President Clinton's campaigns. The news of Biden's diagnosis did 'sort of blunt the release' of Tapper and Thompson's much-awaited book, Democratic commentator Kaivan Shroff said. 'Of course, I do think people are allowed to ask questions about the timing and all of those things,' Shroff added. 'Absolutely, this is going to be a story that comes back, and people are going to want to know: What did you know? When did you know it? Why didn't you know it sooner? 'I think what Democrats need to be able to do is, when this comes up … focus it back on Donald Trump, who's currently leading the country.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Politico
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Politico
All the President's Enablers
The first time I realized that Joe Biden might not be playing with a full deck was in 2014 when he addressed an LGBTQ+ rights group. Explaining his 2012 epiphany in support of same-sex marriage, the then-vice president recalled an incident when his father drove him into Wilmington, Delaware for a job interview. 'We stopped at a red light,' Biden said. 'I looked over to my left, and there were two men kissing good-bye, and I looked, and it was the first time I'd seen that. And my father looked at me and said, 'They love each other.'' In retelling this anecdote, Biden pinpointed the year as 1961. One doesn't need to be an historian of the gay American experience (like me) to suspect that this story was, as Biden himself might say, 'malarkey.' In 1961, homosexuality was illegal in every state of the union (Delaware would not decriminalize it until 1973), diagnosed as a mental illness and categorized as a national security threat. The chance that a young Joe Biden randomly encountered two 'well-dressed' men kissing in broad daylight in downtown Wilmington on their way to work in 1961 is close to zero. This impression of Biden's diminishing mental acuity was compounded by the fact that he had simultaneously recited a significantly different version of the story. In an interview with the New York Times published just three weeks before his speech, Biden said it was one of his sons who had seen the men kissing and that it was he who nonchalantly said, 'They love each other.' Despite this version being more plausible, it was the implausible one involving his father that Biden would repeat on multiple occasions. Episodes like this, which occurred years before Biden decided to run for president in 2020, are important to remember in light of the historical revisionism that the former president's partisans and their media sycophants have been promoting since the disastrous debate performance that drove him from the 2024 election campaign. In this alternate universe, Biden was a sharp and capable commander-in-chief at worst prone to logorrhea. Those who suggested otherwise were 'ageist' enemies of democracy promoting deceptively edited 'cheap fake' videos of Biden to aid and abet Donald Trump. For these diehards, still sticking to their guns in the manner of Japanese holdouts discovered on uninhabited islands decades after the Second World War, Biden's parley with Trump was not a catastrophe the likes of which had not been seen since the advent of televised presidential debates, but merely a 'bad night.' The former president's deterioration and the effort to hide it from the public feature prominently in three recent tomes about the 2024 campaign: Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by the veteran campaign book-writing duo Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes; Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History by Chris Whipple; and, most sensationally, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, It's Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The first two focus more squarely on Biden's ill-fated reelection campaign, while the third, which publishes this week, zeroes in on the cover-up itself. While each book has its individual strengths, revelations and insights, reading them together paints a powerful picture of a presidency in dangerous denial. The impression that the president's true condition was being kept under wraps was only heighted by the news last weekend that Biden has been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, an illness that usually takes years to progress. Of course, well into the second Trump administration, readers have every right to also question the timing of these books, published long after their revelations could have made a difference to recent history. But better late than never. The 'Original Sin' of Tapper and Thompson's title refers to Biden's decision to seek reelection, a choice that surprised many Democrats when his aides started confirming it not long after he was elected in 2020. In December 2019, while Biden was vying for his party's presidential nomination and four months before he vaguely promised to be a 'bridge' to a new 'generation of leaders,' four Biden advisers told POLITICO that it was virtually inconceivable he would run for reelection in 2024. Biden's decline was apparent to his inner circle before the 2020 Democratic Convention, in which, given the pandemic, his participation would consist mostly of pre-taped videos. Even this undemanding medium proved onerous for the then 77-year-old, whose performance speaking virtually with real Americans was, according to two aides, 'horrible' as Biden 'couldn't follow the conversation at all.' Despite being edited by some of the best people in the business, little of the material was usable. The morbid observation by some Biden aides that the pandemic, while terrible for the world, was an enormous boon for their campaign, was entirely accurate. With Biden granted a plausible excuse to avoid active campaigning, the American people were shielded from the physical and mental regression that would become increasingly apparent as the country opened up. And once he entered the White House, it was visible to anyone who saw him up close. 'The cabinet meetings were terrible and at times uncomfortable — and they were from the beginning,' a cabinet secretary told Tapper and Thompson, one of four to speak anonymously with the authors. In October 2021, when Biden addressed the Democratic House caucus in an effort to win their support for an infrastructure package, one member described his 30-minute speech as 'incomprehensible.' According to Allen and Parnes, Vice President Kamala Harris' communications director eventually drew up a spreadsheet listing judges across the country who could administer her the oath of office in the event Biden died. According to all three accounts, 2023 was the year Biden's deterioration became undeniable. It was also the year he formally announced his decision to seek reelection, which brought his worrisome condition increasingly into the open. A television ad in which Biden would answer pre-screened questions from a handpicked audience had to be scrapped because none of the footage was usable. At small, intimate events with donors, Biden would avail himself of teleprompters, stop randomly in the middle of his speech and shake hands, and just as randomly start speaking again. That June, following an interview on MSNBC, Biden got up from the desk and wandered off the set as the cameras rolled. The following month at a White House picnic, Biden didn't recognize Congressman Eric Swalwell, one of his opponents for the nomination. (To be fair to Biden, not recognizing Eric Swalwell is a point in his favor.) Befitting an inner circle dubbed the 'Politburo,' the Biden ascendancy in many ways resembled the Soviet Union in the early 1980s when three successive geriatric leaders died within as many years. The pathetic sight of Barack Obama fetching a spaced out Biden from the edge of the stage at a Hollywood fundraiser and leading him off into the wings recalls the videotaped spectacle of an enfeebled Konstantin Chernenko 'voting' in a hospital room shoddily refashioned as a polling place. In one of the more disturbing revelations from Original Sin, White House residence aides were told that they no longer needed to staff the elevator and could leave work early because the proletarian Bidens didn't like being waited on. The real motive, the authors suggest, was to expand a privacy buffer around the president and limit his exposure to household staff — the kind of move one can imagine in the palace of an aging dictator. By August, 77 percent of Americans, including 69 percent of Democrats, said Biden was too old to seek reelection, numbers that Biden and his aides would have heeded had they truly cared about protecting American democracy from the threat of Donald Trump. Further validation of the public's worries arrived the following February, when Robert Hur, the special counsel assigned to investigate Biden's mishandling of classified documents, released his report. Though Hur, following a five hour-long deposition, found that Biden had 'willfully' retained such documents, he did not recommend prosecution because the president would come across to a jury 'as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.' Tapper and Thompson reprint just a few of the over 250 pages of interview transcripts that led Hur to this conclusion. Throughout, Biden rambles aimlessly about the history of various pieces of furniture in his Delaware beach house, the Mongol invasion of Europe, pictures of his wife Jill in a bathing suit, and much else having absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand. As if to confirm Hur's conclusion, Biden, in a testy press conference responding to the report, confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt. Despite Biden exposing himself as a real-life Mr. Magoo, Democratic partisans rushed to his defense and smeared the special counsel. Former Attorney General Eric Holder vilified Hur, by all accounts a politically impartial public servant, as 'extremely naïve or a partisan.' Then-congressman Adam Schiff, even more attention-hungry than usual given that he was running for Senate, confronted Hur at a hearing and accused him of intending to 'ignite a political firestorm' with his entirely accurate description of the president's fading memory. Though anyone paying a modicum of attention to the Biden presidency should have seen that its titular figure was undergoing a precipitous cognitive and physical decline, what made the debate of June 27, 2024 so significant was that it provided indisputable evidence. Biden glaring off into the distance, mouth agape, looking as if he didn't even know where he was — it was the one time during the campaign when I actually felt sorry for him, even if it was a tragedy of his own making. After deceiving the country and the world about his health for years on end — effectively perpetrating a fraud on the American people — it's sadly inevitable that that many are now questioning the timing of the revelation of his prostate cancer diagnosis. Biden had enablers, of course, none more culpable than his wife Jill, whose performance at the post-debate party was downright creepy. 'Joe, you did such a great job!' she enthused in the manner of a mother trying to cheer up her child who struck out at t-ball. 'You answered every question! You know all the facts!' (One feels slightly more respect for Jill learning that she has since expressed private regret for this performance). Somehow, Biden's own remarks were even more cringe-inducing. Citing 'a famous movie by John Wayne,' he referred to Trump and his minions as 'nothing but lying, dog-faced pony soldiers.' It's a line Biden had cited before, and it would rank as one of the Duke's most memorable had he uttered it, which, of course, he never did. An agonizing three weeks later, Biden relented to the overwhelming pressure from within his party and dropped out of the race. How did a man so evidently unfit for the presidency come so close to securing renomination? Hubris, predicated upon a series of contingencies and counterfactuals. Biden's decision not to challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination, her subsequent loss to Donald Trump, and his victory over Trump four years later, gave Biden and his circle a feeling of political infallibility. Add yet another counterfactual — the possibility that Biden might have remained in the race and somehow beat Trump — and you have a situation where the people who got us into this mess can persist in claiming they were right. The excuses the Biden team served to inquiring reporters and concerned Democrats were transparent nonsense. 'He's just not a great communicator,' a senior White House official told Tapper and Thompson, bringing to mind the late Christopher Hitchens' moniker for Amtrak Joe, 'the Great Commuter.' (Alas, one who 'never sits in the quiet car.') Speaking of the Gipper, longtime Biden adviser Mike Donilon defended his boss by pointing out that the 40th president also once had a bad debate. Indeed, Ronald Reagan became a go-to punching bag for Democrats defensive of Biden's age, his supposedly undiagnosed Alzheimer's largely responsible for the Iran-Contra scandal. A quick look at Reagan's vigorous final press conference dispels such illusions. The most important service these post-mortem volumes provide is naming the people who gaslit the country. Chief among the malefactors is Donilon, informal leader of 'the Politburo' and a figure who blends the ethics of Bob Haldeman with the avarice of Bob Menendez. In 2022, explaining the rationale for a second Biden term, Donilon revealed the altruism that directed him towards a life of public service: 'Nobody walks away from this. No one walks away from the house, the plane, the helicopter.' For his selfless contribution to safeguarding democracy, Donilon demanded an astonishing $4 million fee, a figure difficult to square with his party's ostensible commitment to gender equity considering that Jennifer O'Malley Dillion, the actual campaign manager, had a $300,000 salary. Most astoundingly, Tapper and Thompson reveal that Donilon was the only person who shared polling data with Biden, thus earning him a place in history alongside the advisers who told the last Shah of Iran that he remained popular with his people. To this day Donilon is deluded as ever, recently treating Harvard undergraduates to a bizarre rant in which he declared that it was the Democratic leadership which had in fact 'lost its mind.' Next is Steve Richetti, one of Biden's White House counselors whose main function appears to have been obsessively watching Morning Joe every day and regaling White House staff with all the nice things that the Democratic Party mouthpieces who host it said about the terrific jobs they were doing. Following a White House meeting with Democratic Governors a week after the debate, a concerned Maura Healey of Massachusetts told Richetti about the troubling exchange she had just had with the commander-in-chief in which he cited polls showing him beating Trump. Healey was unaware of such polls because they didn't exist. 'I've been doing this for thirty years,' Richetti retorted. 'I know polls.' Two weeks later, after a meeting with a group of pollsters bearing bad news, Richetti angrily called one of them and snapped, 'You're supposed to tell us how to win, not that we can't.' One almost feels sorry for Ron Klain, Biden's first chief of staff. To have one of the most insecure men in American politics declare that 'only one person here is smarter than me and it's Ron' suggests how Klain could have become so servile towards his boss. When former Obama adviser David Axelrod told the New York Times that Biden 'would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term,' Klain chewed his ear off. The following year, when talent agent extraordinaire Ari Emanuel expressed similar worries while subjecting Klain to one of his world-famous tirades at the Aspen Institute, Klain, according to Allen and Parnes, 'brushed the concern aside.' Even though, as Klain later told Whipple, he feared the debate would be a 'nationally televised disaster,' three weeks after said disaster he was telling Biden to stay in the race. The hubris of Anita Dunn, 'the grand dame of Beltway public relations' in the words of Allen and Parnes, derived from her belief that she was the reason Biden won his decisive victory in the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary. Though Congressman Jim Clyburn deserved the credit, Dunn and O'Malley Dillon 'were touted as geniuses,' according to Whipple. Believing her own press, Dunn vastly overestimated her abilities, lecturing a Biden pollster in early 2023 that 'we don't need polling. The decision has been made. He's running.' Following the debate, she told Whipple that Biden 'had actually won…with people who mattered,' a constituency that apparently excluded the vast majority of the voting public. Alas, not even this level of purblind loyalty was sufficient to maintain Biden's trust. Dunn's one saving grace — her insistence that Biden's prodigal son Hunter be kept as far away from the campaign as possible — alienated the First Son, who turned his father against her. Hunter's antics and shady business dealings were more than just a tabloid sideshow, Tapper and Thompson write, because the drama surrounding him symbolized 'a family dynamic built around rejection of reality.' In a revealing display of grandiosity, Hunter told his family that if Donald Trump was able to strike back at his critics, so should he. Hunter was the leading advocate for the novel theory that it was not Biden who blundered the debate but rather his advisers who left him ill-prepared. Family dynamics comprise a significant part of this Shakespearean tragedy. When Joe was vice president, he went to great lengths hiding the extent of older son Beau's illness, foreshadowing the later concealment of his own decline. And it wasn't just the Bidens who treated the presidency as a family business. Donilon's niece served on the National Security Council, Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed's daughter was Biden's day scheduler, and all four of Richetti's children had administration jobs. If there was anyone within the Biden brood who had the influence, never mind the responsibility, to stop the impending disaster that was the 2024 reelection campaign, it was Jill, or 'Dr.' Jill as she insisted on being called. ('Lady McBiden,' as Alexandra Pelosi referred to her, is more fitting.) Alas, Jill was even 'more firm than her husband about maintaining a residence at Pennsylvania Avenue,' according to Allen and Parnes. Anthony Bernal, who exerted more power than perhaps any other chief of staff to a first lady, was the natural extension of his boss, with his incessant talk about 'the second term,' his planning Jill's 2025 travel schedule, and his pronouncements that 'You don't run for four years — you run for eight.' Rounding out this rogues' gallery are senior communications staffers TJ Ducklo and Andrew Bates, who behaved like the mooks in a third-rate mob movie. Ducklo, fired early in the administration for threatening to 'destroy' a female reporter and who clearly saw himself as the muscle of this witless duo, was brought back for the re-elect mainly to bully Democrats into attacking journalists who reported on Biden's age. Bates, meanwhile, reached Baghdad Bob-level comedic heights during the final months of the campaign with his ludicrous attestations to Biden's fearsome mental and physical stamina. My personal favorite, issued on X during a NATO press conference in which Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as 'President Putin' and confused his own vice president with Trump, was, 'To answer the question on everyone's minds: No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs. He's just that fucking good.' Presented with these characters, one can't help but feel pity for the luckless Karine Jean-Pierre, who as the public face of the Biden White House had the unenviable job of defending its numbskull denizens on a daily basis. Finally, there are the many Democrats who witnessed the president's senescence yet said nothing. At the top of this list is Schiff, who lambasted Hur on national television for having the temerity to remark upon Biden's 'poor memory.' A few months later, after Biden confirmed Hur's assessment on the CNN debate stage, Schiff went around telling colleagues that Biden needed to drop out. When Schiff finally mustered the fortitude to say this out loud, this profile in courage became the 23rd member of Congress to do so. A public apology to Hur has not been forthcoming. Revealingly, none of these books are interested in the essential role that the media played in the cover-up. Given how much the press valorizes itself for defending democracy, its dereliction of duty regarding Biden's infirmities is a massive failure. To be sure, the Biden White House didn't make things easy for reporters; it's no coincidence that the two journalists granted the most access to Biden — Evan Osnos of the New Yorker and Franklin Foer of the Atlantic — overlooked the biggest story of his presidency. But lack of access is no excuse. When POLITICO's Ben Schreckinger produced a deeply reported, unvarnished book about the Biden family's half-century rise to power in 2021, the mainstream media ignored it. With the exception of Thompson, one of the handful of journalists who consistently reported on Biden's fitness and who bears the scars of vicious White House attacks on his character to prove it, most of the media declined to investigate Biden's disposition because it interfered with a higher priority: saving the country from Donald Trump. The individuals who collaborated in the cover-up of Joe Biden's condition deserve to be shunned. While many contributed to the disaster that was the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination process, ultimate responsibility rests with Biden himself. Like Bill Clinton, who made his family, friends, and advisers lie for him over a personal matter, Joe Biden obliged his supporters to engage in deception on his behalf. While Clinton clearly understood what he was doing, however, we can't say the same about Biden. Cocooned by mendacious aides and grasping family members, his cognitive functions degenerating rapidly, the perception of Biden as a vulnerable senior citizen manipulated by others is unnervingly realistic. But while Clinton's duplicity concerned the minutiae of sex, Biden's affected the fate of the world. The lie that he, his family, and his underlings foisted on the American public was severe as any Donald Trump has ever told.
The Hill
18-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Democrats want Biden to take responsibility for loss to Trump
Democrats are tired of Joe Biden saying he would have won. What they want, they say, is for the former president to admit to his part in the party's 2024 loss to Donald Trump. Democratic strategists, operatives and donors this week in conversations and text exchanges all reiterated the same thing: They want Biden to take responsibility for former Vice President Kamala Harris's defeat to the new president. They also say he never should have run for a second term in the first place. 'Would it be nice if Biden finally accepted and admitted he shouldn't have run for a second term? Sure,' said Democratic strategist Anthony Coley, who worked for the Biden administration. 'But candidly, does it really matter at this point? History will have the final say — and its first draft isn't looking good.' Democrats continue to find themselves in a dire state as they desperately try to figure out how to rebuild their party after November's devastating defeat. Polling this week from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs revealed that only about one-third of Democrats are 'very optimistic' or 'somewhat optimistic' about the future of their party. That is a huge drop from July 2024 when 6 in 10 Democrats said they had an optimistic view of their party. Democrats know they have to rewrite their playbook almost entirely from their messaging and the way they connect with voters to the way they view fundraising. It's no longer OK to say they outraised and outspent the opponent, some of them acknowledge, because Trump proved twice that both points didn't matter. But the thing that irks them arguably the most is the way Biden and his closest advisers conducted themselves as they decided to seek another term in office. And lately, as a rash of books (including this author's 'Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House') and reports have come out about Biden's mental acuity, the way he has tried to rewrite the narrative recently has also annoyed a lot of Democrats. In a string of interviews in recent weeks, Biden has defended his record and pushed back at critics — even former aides — who argued that he suffered cognitive decline. 'They are wrong,' Biden said of the criticism. 'There is nothing to sustain that.' He also went on to defend his performance as president: 'I said when I got out of the race, I was still going to be president. 'I think I did a pretty damn good job the last six months,' he said. But he also maintained that he 'wasn't surprised' Harris ended up losing. He attributed her defeat largely to sexism. The interviews have angered Democrats who say they can only begin their rebuilding efforts with some accountability on what exactly went wrong. That begins with Biden, they say. 'He needs to stop talking about what could have happened and what should have happened and how the party betrayed him and start talking about how he ultimately betrayed the party,' said one Democratic strategist. 'The reason we find ourselves in this position is because he was too stubborn to step aside.' In a series of posts on social platform X this week, former Obama administration adviser David Axelrod — who was one of the few Democrats who was openly skeptical of Biden running for a second term in recent years — doubled down on his thinking. 'A lot of folks now are acknowledging what was obvious then: A guy who was already showing frailties and would have been closer to 90 than 80 by the end of his second term should not have run for the hardest job on the planet,' Axelrod said. 'Never was going to end well.' 'Next to being president, the pressure of running for it is almost as hard,' Axelrod said. 'The idea that an 81-year-old man, already limited, could handle both — and then serve another four years — always was nuts. And the people closest to him did him no favor by not telling him the truth.' Judging by Biden's approach in his recent interviews, Democrats say they are doubtful that the former president or his closest advisers will do an about-face. Nayyera Haq, who served as an aide in the Obama White House, said fellow Democrats are looking to the future. 'The difference now with Biden saying he would have won is that there is no longer a cadre of people whose job it is to protect the aging president's ego,' Haq said. 'Like most of the country, they want to move on and look to what's next.' And as for Biden's top advisers, Haq added: 'I wouldn't expect any of the Biden loyalists to change their tune now, not after years of creating the original problematic reality.' Amie Parnes covers the White House and presidential politics for The Hill. She is also the co-author of several bestsellers, including the recent 'Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House.'
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Book Details Secret Wheelchair Drama During Joe Biden's Campaign
Internal discussions took place about 'putting' Joe Biden in a wheelchair during the 2024 campaign, but advisers squelched the idea because the move would be 'politically untenable' ― at least until after the election. So says a new book, 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.' According to an Axios summary Tuesday adapted from the book, Biden's inner circle was alarmed at the incumbent's physical decline, which had become apparent in falls like the one he experienced at the Air Force Academy graduation in 2023. His own doctor, Kevin O'Connor, had warned that if Biden fell again, a wheelchair could become necessary, 'Original Sin' noted, per Axios. The book, co-authored by Axios' Alex Thompson and CNN's Jake Tapper, comes out May 20. The doctor clashed with Biden's handlers over the amount of 'rest time' allotted in his schedule, and he joked with them that 'they were trying to kill him, while he was trying to keep him alive,' Axios wrote from an excerpt. Worries about a foot injury slowing his gait in 2020 had turned to more serious concerns about his spinal degeneration as the 2024 campaign wore on. According to the book report, the president's camp arranged for handrails up steps during appearances, encouraged him to wear sneakers more often, and choreographed his movements to mitigate mishaps. Biden's orthopedic woes had been public knowledge for some time. A 2021 write-up from the president's doctor, released by the Biden administration, discussed Biden's 'stiffened gait,' which resulted partly from the foot injury as well as spinal arthritis. Another book about the campaign, 'Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,' revealed earlier that fluorescent tape laid out on a carpet served as 'bread crumbs' for Biden to follow at a reception hosted by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy last summer. An unnamed Biden rep acknowledged Biden's 'physical changes' as he aged but told Axios, 'We are still waiting for someone, anyone, to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential address where he was unable to do his job because of mental decline. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite — he was a very effective president.' But tension over the president's vigor extended beyond his mobility and mental acuity. His longevity came into question as well. Aides for Harris constructed a 'death-pool roster' of judges who could swear her in if he died, according to 'Fight.' Biden's doddering debate against Donald Trump eventually led to his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of Harris, who lost to Trump in the 2024 election. The former president shocked observers recently when he said his late exit from the race wouldn't have mattered, suggesting Trump's victory was a fait accompli. CNN Anchor Is Caught Making Face At Biden Remark, And His Next Move Is Surprising Joe Biden Gives Stunning Answer When Asked If He Should Have Withdrawn Earlier Biden Torches Trump In First Interview Since Leaving Office: 'What The Hell's Going On Here?'
