Don't think of this as promotion for the dickbag's phony book. Think of it as releasing all the relevant material so that no one has to buy it.
CNN continues spinning for Biden even in this article purporting to reveal the details of his mental unfitness.
In the final two years of his presidency, Joe Biden had private moments where he could not recall the names of top aides, had an increasingly limited private schedule, was prone to incoherence and losing his train of thought, and was hidden from the public eye to shield the extent of his decline, according to a new book from CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson.
We saw that Biden was given reporters' questions before they were "asked." We saw on those note-cards that Biden was given the exact question and also given his scripted answer.
Did Tapper and Thompson not notice that then? They seem to continue not noticing that, because noticing that would force them to name "reporters" eager to join a fraud on the American people.
The book details episode after episode where Democratic lawmakers, White House aides, members of Biden's Cabinet and Democratic donors were shocked at Biden's diminishing mental and physical capabilities while the president embarked on an ill-fated 2024 reelection bid. But nearly all did not speak out publicly or try to stop him from running.
"What the world saw at his one and only 2024 debate was not an anomaly. It was not a cold; it was not someone who was underprepared or overprepared. It was not someone who was just a little tired," Tapper and Thompson write. "It was the natural result of an eighty-one-year-old man whose capabilities had been diminishing for years. Biden, his family, and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify an attempt to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years."
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Tapper and Thompson report that concerns about Biden's health from those working for him dated all the way back to 2020, but his mental and physical diminishment accelerated in 2023 and 2024 before his disastrous June debate with Donald Trump.
As I keep saying, they're lying about it only getting noticeably bad in 2023 to 2024 to limit their own exposure.
Although I should say that CNN is lying about what the book says -- the book doesn't say it goes back to 2020, it says it goes back to 2019, and Tapper says in his Megyn Kelly interview (linked below) that it goes back to 2015.
At one point in December 2022, Biden could not remember the names of his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and communications director, Kate Bedingfield, the authors write. In fall 2023, he did not appear to recognize Jamie Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee (Harrison disputes this). And in early 2024, Tapper and Thompson report that Biden did not recognize movie star George Clooney, whom Biden has known for years.
Some members of Biden's Cabinet told Tapper and Thompson they did not believe Biden could be relied upon to perform at 2 a.m. if there was a national emergency.
"Things that would have been considered a disaster in 2023 -- by 2024, we would have said, 'Okay, we got through that,'" a top aide told the authors.
Tapper and Thompson write that Biden was protected by an insular group, including his wife, his son and a group of longtime aides nicknamed the "Politburo," a reference to the leadership committee of a communist party.
Biden's top aides -- Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed -- valued loyalty to the president. Those not in the inner circle, including campaign staff, pollsters and members of Biden's Cabinet, believed the aides were protecting Biden from negative information as the president decided to run for reelection with no discussion or input from others in the White House or campaign, according to the book.
"It was a theology that bordered on zealotry: In January 2025, Donilon continued to hold the viewpoint that while Biden might forget and mix up names, when the president decided what the proposal should be for a peace deal between Hamas and Israel, he was pretty damn smart," Tapper and Thompson write.
Biden was long known as one of the stupidest braying jackasses in the Senate, a body known to be filled with self-important mediocrities and zeroes.
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Tapper and Thompson found that concerns about Biden's health issues dated back to his 2020 campaign. Biden shot campaign videos talking to voters on Zoom ahead of the convention but the hours of footage were largely unusable and stunned some on Biden's team.
"It was like a different person. It was incredible. This was like watching Grandpa who shouldn't be driving," said one Democrat, according to the book. "I didn't think he could be president."
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Multiple lawmakers told the authors the Biden they saw reminded them of ailing parents and grandparents.
Publicly, questions swirled in 2024 about Biden's health, fueled by the scathing report from Hur, who opted not to charge Biden for mishandling classified information in part because of how a jury would view his age.
Privately, Tapper and Thompson report Democrats were shocked at their interactions with Biden last year, both in closed-door meetings and donor gatherings. Democratic senators told the authors they saw a noticeable change in Biden during private meetings in early 2024, which they found alarming but gave their former colleague the benefit of the doubt.
One senior administration official angrily confronted a White House colleague after a meeting with Biden's task force on reproductive health-care access. "What the fk are you guys doing?" the official said. "I don't get how this guy can do any campaigning to run for reelection."
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After Biden's rousing March 2024 State of the Union speech -- a performance many Democrats pointed to in justification he could run for reelection -- some White House aides who didn't normally get access to him were disturbed at his deteriorating condition when he addressed a room of high schoolers later that night and gave a rambling speech. One aide, the authors write, couldn't help asking "what on earth they had just seen."
"This isn't going to work," the aide thought, according to the book. "He can't do it. This is crazy. Crazy. Crazy."
After Biden's disastrous June debate with Trump, Tapper and Thompson report that Biden's closest aides tried to move past the debacle as though nothing happened.
"If anything, the debate made Biden aides more watchful for signs of disloyalty," the authors write. "They saw the debate as just the latest instance of counting Biden out."
Behind the scenes, Democrats urged Biden's inner circle to get the president out there in unscripted events. But the authors write that Biden "couldn't do what folks were calling on him to do to prove his acuity."
One campaign adviser recounted a post-debate discussion with Biden aboard Air Force One. "What are we doing here? the adviser thought as the president spoke. This guy can't form a fking sentence," according to the book. "If I had a conversation like this with someone who wasn't the president, I would be worried about his health. And here he is, the sitting president of the United States."
Via John Sexton, who also complies the comments from the CNN article. The top comments? "Why are you talking about Biden's mental unfitness, which is old news, when there is so much New News to cover, like Orange Man Still Bad."
Below, Megyn Kelly confronts Jake Tapper with his own frantic efforts to spin for Biden, including playing back clips of his infamous Laura Bush attack dogging. He claims he "already apologized" to Laura Bush -- privately, of course, because Tapper doesn't want to admit his egregious bias publicly.
And I imagine he was told to fake-apologize to Bush privately by his crisis communications advisor, who told him to do this so he could offer the Big Reveal that he "already" apologized to her. Probably a few weeks ago when he was stunned to learn that people thought he showed his usual Democrat bias in covering for Biden.
He continues insisting that only knowing what he "knows now" does his past partisan service for the Democrats give him "humility." Megyn Kelly points out that much of what Tapper is "reporting" now was reported by the right years ago, but Tapper ignores that and insists that only Now I Can All Be Told.
Maddening.