WSJ, NYT Agree: Biden Was In Obvious Cognitive Decline Not Just at the End But For His Entire Term as Fake President

Yesterday, the New York Times -- which of course insisted that Biden was doing Chinese Human Pyramid Gymnastics when the cameras weren't on him up until his debate meltdown -- admitted that Biden was in a degraded mental condition for a long time.

Though they're very careful to say that while he couldn't possibly serve another term, his skill at doing Chinese Human Pyramid Gymnastics made him perfectly capable of serving out his current term.

A Weary Biden Heads for the Exit

Still stinging from the election, President Biden is pushing for his final priorities but has absented himself from the national conversation about Donald Trump after warning repeatedly that he was a threat to American democracy.

It was a long day in Angola. President Biden had already visited a port facility bracketed with cranes and toured a factory filled with conveyor belts. So by the time he sat down at a large wooden circular table in a warm, stuffy room with African leaders, he put his head in his hand and briefly closed his eyes as the speeches droned on.

Flying across the world would have tired even a president younger than 82. But the point, as he saw it, was that he came. He traveled thousands of miles to highlight a new U.S.-backed railway that could transform the economies of Africa and supply resources for America.

Of course it's always about trains with Joey Choo-Choo.

He came. He did not have to. He insisted on it and was proud to be the first president to come.

This is the twilight of Mr. Biden's presidency, the final days of the final chapter of an epic half-century political journey that has had more than its share of twists and turns. Time is catching up with Mr. Biden. He looks a little older and a little slower with each passing day.

It's incredible that the NYT thinks this is brave reporting.

Here comes the "aides say he's totally sharp" again:

Aides say he remains plenty sharp in the Situation Room, calling world leaders to broker a cease-fire in Lebanon or deal with the chaos of Syria's rebellion. But it is hard to imagine that he seriously thought he could do the world's most stressful job for another four years.

See, there you go: The media told you the truth both times. When it told you Biden was cognitively fit as a fiddle, it was telling you the truth. He can do the job of president right now.

But on January 20th, he will suddenly degrade precipitously. So they were also telling the truth when they said (after Democrat billionaire donors told them to say it) that Biden must not be the candidate in 2024.

They're always telling the truth, Bigots. You're the ones who always lie.

...

Determined to finish on a high note and shape his legacy as a consequential president, Mr. Biden wants to "sprint to the finish line" in these final weeks, as his chief of staff, Jeffrey D. Zients, put it. He is checking a few last boxes on his presidential bucket list. Angola? Check. A visit to the Amazon rainforest, another presidential first? Check.

The only way Biden could sprint to the finish line is if you drew the finish line on the street and dropped him to "sprint" from a 30 story building.

The biggest box left is a cease-fire in Gaza and if he manages that, it would be a validating triumph for a departing president.

LOL. Except everyone knows that would be due to Hamas wanting to placate the incoming president.

Otherwise, he is wrapping up his time in office by claiming credit for the healthy economy that he is turning over to his ungrateful successor and by getting money previously approved by Congress out the door for roads and bridges at home and arms for Ukraine abroad.

Inflation remains close to 3% and we just found out that almost all the jobs "created" over the past year were figments of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' very liberal imagination.

But it's a super healthy economy.

...

Mr. Biden has absented himself from the debate convulsing the country. After warning again and again that Mr. Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy, he has now gone silent on the matter and even aides decline to answer questions on whether the incoming president is still a danger. A traditionalist to his bones, Mr. Biden has opted for the grace and reticence he believes are befitting the departing president of a defeated party, even as the incoming president threatens to imprison opponents and tries to install conspiracy-minded acolytes in positions of power.

They just never acknowledge that Biden has been doing what they claim Trump is "threatening."

Even when pushing for his priorities, Mr. Biden has found it hard to break through. During his visit to the Amazon rainforest last month, his fragility appeared painfully clear to those traveling with him.

And all of this just happened. Before the NYT acknowledged this fragility, all videos showing him shuffling around in confusion were Cheapfakes.

After speaking for seven minutes on a day of draining humidity, a blue shirt hanging loosely over his frame, he turned to slowly shuffle away down a dirt path as several people in the audience not used to seeing him up close said they held their breath, worried that he would trip. (Aides said his gait was no more unsteady than usual.)

During an arrival ceremony on his trip to Angola this month, on the day after a long, tiring transoceanic flight that would have taxed any octogenarian, President João Lourenço suddenly clutched Mr. Biden's arm to help guide him up a step.

When Mr. Biden visited the National Museum of Slavery that afternoon, he did not actually enter the main building to view the exhibitions; instead, artifacts were brought outside to show him, which two people familiar with the planning attributed to fear that the steep stairs would be too much of a challenge. (The White House denied that the stairs were a concern and said he was not brought inside for scheduling and logistical reasons.)

So there, the NYT admits what we all saw on videotape.

Now, it's right back to insisting that when the cameras aren't on him, he's doing Chinese Human Pyramid Gymnastics routines.

In meetings at the White House, aides said, he is likewise still astute, still dictating specific actions and still editing speeches to suit his preferences. He made calls to other world leaders as part of a successful effort to broker a cease-fire to stop the war in Lebanon and again to consult on the aftermath of the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

At a ceremony honoring the Special Olympics last week, he struck some guests as fully engaged. "He seemed fine," said Elaine Kamarck, a longtime Democratic National Committee member who attended. "To my amazement, he stayed through the whole dinner. We all thought maybe he would disappear, but no, he sat down, he ate with everybody, he stayed through all of dinner. And he seemed just fine."
Still, he grew emotional at one point during the ceremony. At this time of year, friends say, Mr. Biden can become a little seasonally depressed, remembering the 1972 car accident that killed his first wife and daughter shortly before Christmas.

Biden has Schrodinger's Senility -- he only is senile when he's being observed.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Biden has actually shown dementia and frailty since the days he emerged from his basement to pretend to be president.

I think the NYT heard that the WSJ was preparing this piece and so rushed out their own cover-up version of the story to consume all the oxygen in the room.

But here's the real story: The Biden White House frequently observed Biden "blanking out" during briefings and scripted even their cabinet meetings so that the Secretaries wouldn't see Biden showing obvious senility.

How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge

Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied Biden has declined.

During the 2020 presidential primary, Jill Biden campaigned so extensively across Iowa that she held events in more counties than her husband--a fact her press secretary at the time, Michael LaRosa, touted to a local reporter.

His superior in the Biden campaign quickly chided him. As the three rode in a minivan through the state's cornfields, Anthony Bernal, then a deputy campaign manager and chief of staff to Jill Biden, pressed LaRosa to contact the reporter again and play down any comparison in campaign appearances between Joe Biden, then 77, and his wife, who is eight years his junior. Her energetic schedule only highlighted her husband's more plodding pace, LaRosa recalls being told.

The message from Biden's team was clear. "The more you talk her up, the more you make him look bad," LaRosa said.

The small correction foreshadowed how Biden's closest aides and advisers would manage the limitations of the oldest president in U.S. history during his four years in office.

To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members--including powerful secretaries such as Defense's Lloyd Austin and Treasury's Janet Yellen--were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president's ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.'s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.

Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.

Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn't talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.

Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden's case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations. There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed.

Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public. "They body him to such a high degree," a person who witnessed it said, adding that the "hand holding" is unlike anything other recent presidents have had.

The word "body" here is used to mean "stick to and support like a 'body man' in politics," who is an aide paid to stay close to the politician and push people out of his way if needed. Basically soft, unarmed versions of bodyguards.

This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations.

...

"Good Days, Bad Days"

The president's slide has been hard to overlook. While preparing last year for his interview with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden's handling of classified documents, the president couldn't recall lines that his team discussed with him. At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden's team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president's fading warble.

Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.

The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.

The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.

The strategies to protect Biden largely worked--until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.

Biden, staffed with advisers since he became a senator at age 30, came to the White House with a small team of fiercely loyal, long-serving aides who knew him and Washington so well that they could be particularly effective proxies. They didn't tolerate criticism of Biden's performance or broader dissent within the Democratic Party, especially when it came to the president's decision to run for a second term.
Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden's advanced age had arisen early on--in just the first few months of his term.

Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.

They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: The exchanges should be short and focused, according to people who received the message directly from White House aides.

Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.

The White House denied that his schedule has been altered due to his age.

If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. "He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we're going to address this tomorrow," the former aide recalled the official saying.

The article notes that even high-ranking Congressmen taking a point position on something important to Biden -- like the FISA bill -- were not allowed to speak to Biden directly, but only spoke to his aides. This, of course, was to hide the (open) secret of the fake president's senility.

One lawmaker who did get one-on-one time with Biden noticed that the president lacked stamina and heavily relied on his staff: Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat-turned-independent who held up chunks of Biden's legislative agenda during the first half of Biden's term. Manchin said the job required a level of energy that he wasn't sure Biden had been able to sustain.

"I just thought that maybe the president just lost that fight," Manchin said in an interview. "The ability to continue to stay on, just grind it, grind it, grind it."

Instead of Biden directing follow up, Manchin noticed that Biden's staff played a much bigger role driving his agenda than he had experienced in other administrations. Manchin referred to them as the "eager beavers"--a group that included then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. "They were going, 'I'll take care of that,' " Manchin said.

...

Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn't be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said.

It's a good article. Worth the read.

Chris Cillizza @ChrisCillizza 4h
An apology: As a journalist, I should have pushed harder on the very real questions about Joe Biden's physical and mental health as president.

I talked about it here:
youtube.com/watch?v=_WQKveT8...

Greg Price @greg_price11 1m
Instead of apologizing, it's easier to just say that journalists ran interference for Joe Biden's senility because journalists are liberals who root for Democrats to win and will run the same interference again the next time a Democrat is in the White House.

Sean Davis @seanmdav 1h
Interesting that these "apologies" only ever come when there's no longer any political cost to telling inconvenient truths about Democrats.

Posted by: andycanuck

Mika Brzezinski read two paragraphs from that NYT piece.

She carefully avoided any mention of the fake president's "weariness" or the impossibility of him continuing this grim charade into another term.

Instead, she read two paragraphs praising Biden for his "accomplishments."

She avoided the actual news in the "news" article.