New book reveals how Biden’s inner circle ‘pushed forward with the president’s re-election campaign despite seeing signs of physical and mental decline’
Joe Biden was in such bad physical shape beginning in 2023 that advisers discussed whether he would need a wheelchair to get around if he won a second term, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson write in their forthcoming book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
“Biden’s physical deterioration—most apparent in his halting walk—had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election,” the authors write, according to an excerpt published in Axios. Some context: Biden met often with elite historians who compared him to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also required a wheelchair to get around.
The president’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, privately warned that “a wheelchair might be necessary” if Biden had another awkward fall like the one he suffered after tripping over a sandbag at the Air Force Academy in June 2023. Aides thought it was “politically untenable” to deploy the wheelchair while Biden was still running for reelection, so they went to great lengths to make it easier for the president to get around. “They tried to figure out shorter walking paths, began insisting on handrails for steps up to the stage at his appearances, had him wear sneakers more often, changed his visual briefings before events to ensure he knew every step he was expected to take, and guided him more carefully through the movements,” Thompson reports.
O’Connor was especially concerned about the “significant spinal arthritis” that was causing Biden’s notoriously stiff and halting gait. But that’s not what White House aides were telling reporters in 2024. They insisted that Biden was struggling to walk because he refused to wear a walking boot after fracturing his foot in November 2020 while playing with Major, one of his feral dogs. “In short, they said, Biden was being undone by his own vigor,” Thompson writes.
In fact, some Biden aides kept touting his physical and mental fitness in the days following his disastrous CNN debate performance in June 2024. “Not only does the President perform around the clock, but he maintains a schedule that tires younger aides, including foreign trips into active war zones, and he proves he has that capacity by delivering tangible results that pundits had declared impossible,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Axios.
Original Sin, which comes out May 20, will reveal how Biden’s family members and senior advisers “pushed forward with the president’s re-election campaign despite seeing signs of physical and mental decline over the course of his administration.” In anticipation of the book’s publication, Biden has made several media appearances in an effort to preemptively rebut the allegations. “There’s nothing to sustain that,” he said last week in a semi-coherent response to a question about his cognitive decline. “We went to work and we got it done, and, uh, you know, one of the things that, uh, that, well, I’m talking too long … the point of the matter is that I would, I would offer specific evidence, if we had time, [of] exactly what I got done when I was, supposedly, lost my cognitive capability.”
Biden has hired Chris Meagher, the former press flack who helped cover up Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s mysterious health-related leave of absence, to spearhead the public relations campaign ahead of the book release. Biden’s return to the public spotlight may also be motivated by the fact that his family is broke and needs money to sustain their lavish lifestyles. The president’s crackhead son, Hunter, and brother, Jim, appear to have no marketable skills beyond peddling access to Joe, who no longer has any influence worth buying.
A Biden spokesperson “who declined to be identified” told Axios on Tuesday there was no evidence Biden was “unable to do his job because of mental decline.”
THEY KNEW: 30 Times Democrats Worried (Privately) About Biden’s Decline Before the Debate Fiasco
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