‘That doesn’t look anything like the president I know. When I deal with him, he’s sharp.’
Ian Sams, the former “Grillary Clinton” apron model who served two years as a top spokesman for President Joe Biden and repeatedly touted his boss’s mental fitness, had just two interactions with the addled octogenarian during his time in the White House. Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, revealed the “shocking” detail on Thursday after Sams sat for an interview with committee staff.
Sams led the White House’s response to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. When Hur unveiled his report in February 2024, which described Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Sams became the leading spokesman on matters related to the president’s obvious cognitive decline.
In a press conference following the report’s release, Sams denounced Hur for “making gratuitous and inappropriate criticisms of the president,” which he implied were motivated by political grievance. Mainstream media outlets eagerly quoted Sams’s accusation that Hur was the “first special counsel in history not to indict anybody.” Alas, it wasn’t true. Sams insisted Hur’s report did not uncover evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials, even though it explicitly stated that investigators “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.”
Comer pointed out that Hur, who interviewed Biden for more than 10 hours over 2 days, spent more time interacting with the president than Sams.
The revelation does not come as a surprise given what we know about how the White House operated on Biden’s watch. Access to the president was restricted to a small circle of longtime aides who effectively ran the country while Biden slept and played with trains. Anyone who dared question Biden’s fitness to serve was punished for disloyalty.
Sams continued to defend Biden’s cognitive health after the disastrous CNN debate in July 2024. Asked about a report that Biden “increasingly appeared confused or listless,” according to current and former aides, and required daily naps while preparing for the debate, Sams denied the allegations based on his (extremely limited) personal experience. “No, I’ve gotta say that doesn’t look anything like the president that I know,” he said on MSNBC. “When I deal with him, he’s sharp. He’s asking tough questions.”
The journeyman Democratic spokesman left the White House in August 2024 to join the Kamala Harris campaign, another entry on a resumé that will live in infamy. It’s why he is sometimes referred to as “the Forrest Gump of political failure.” Sams was also the national press secretary for Harris’s disastrous campaign in the 2020 primary, which ended in 2019. He was responsible for one of the worst photoshops of all time, and accused a BuzzFeed reporter who gently criticized Harris’s debate performance of promoting toxic “whiteness.”
Before failing upward into a senior White House role, Sams was best known for modeling the “Grillary Clinton” apron while serving as regional press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s losing presidential campaign in 2016.
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