CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday revealed new details from his upcoming book on Joe Biden’s reported health decline, including that a member of Biden’s administration was once left “shocked” by his behavior in the White House.
Tapper — while previewing “Original Sin,” co-authored by Axios’ Alex Thompson, on CNN’s “The Lead” — referred to an unnamed Cabinet secretary who recalled Biden being seemingly “disoriented” and “out of it” in a “rare meeting” during his presidency.
“The staff did him wrong,” recalled the former Biden administration official, per Tapper. “If you were with him every day and you knew this was a problem, why didn’t you go to him and say something?”
A different Cabinet secretary noted that they didn’t think the president had “dementia” but recognized that he was “an old man,” according to Tapper.
“The president can give you four to six good hours a day,” they said of Biden.
“When he got tired, sloppy isn’t the right word, but his guard was down.”
By last year, Tapper noted that Biden officials believed they couldn’t rely upon him to perform presidential duties around the clock, such as if an emergency came up at 2 a.m..
The CNN host reported that Biden’s cabinet secretaries — along with his aides — “didn’t have access” to or didn’t see the former president “for months” at a time beginning in 2023.
“Others told us that in some meetings, Biden would mumble incoherently, something the public only got glimpses of,” continued Tapper before showing a clip of Biden doing just that in January 2024.
A Biden spokesperson, in a statement on Tapper and Thompson’s reporting, said that the former president’s team continues to “await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job.”
The statement continued, “In fact, the evidence points to the opposite. He was a very effective president.”
The book — which accuses the Biden White House of covering up his condition before he dropped his reelection bid last year — reportedly explores how Biden once confused at least two of his officials and, at a June 2024 fundraiser, the former president failed to recognize his friend George Clooney.
H/T: Mediaite