CNN
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Some members of former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet did not believe that he could be relied upon to perform at 2 a.m. during an emergency by the final year of his presidency, according to a new book from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson.
Several secretaries told the authors that Biden’s inner circle grew so small in 2023 and 2024 that even members of his Cabinet weren’t included.
“Access dropped off considerably in 2024, and I didn’t interact with him as much,” said one Cabinet secretary, who explained that instead of briefing Biden, the secretary would brief other senior White House aides, who then briefed the president.
The Cabinet member thought it was strange and wondered if it was a way of filtering out particular information and directing Biden’s decision-making, according to the book.
“Yes, the president is ‘making the decisions,’ but if the inner circle is shaping them in such a way, is it really a decision? Are they leading him to something?” the Cabinet secretary wondered.
The new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” is being released on May 20. The book documents how Biden, his closest aides and his family forged ahead with the former president’s doomed 2024 reelection bid despite signs of his physical and mental decline.
The book is based on more than 200 interviews, mostly with Democratic insiders, almost all of which occurred after the 2024 election was over.
Even before Biden’s disastrous June 2024 debate that led to his decision to exit the race three weeks later, Tapper and Thompson write that Biden had been showing signs of his decline over and over again that were either ignored or explained away.
Tapper and Thompson write that Biden’s aides privately discussed whether they would have to put him in a wheelchair for his second term and that Biden didn’t recognize movie star George Clooney at a June 2024 fundraiser.
In a statement to CNN, a Biden spokesman criticized the book, saying: “We continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite – he was a very effective president.”
The authors spoke to multiple Biden Cabinet secretaries for the book, who explained how Biden’s longtime aides shielded the president from them in 2023 and 2024 as his health deteriorated.
Tapper and Thompson write that White House aides who once had regular access to Biden would go months without seeing him. At some meetings, others noticed that Biden “would occasionally be mumbling and not making much sense,” according to the authors.
“I don’t think he has dementia,” said a second Cabinet secretary, according to the authors. “But the thing is, he’s an old man. The president can give you four to six good hours a day. When he got tired, sloppy isn’t the right word, but his guard was down.”
The second Cabinet secretary said of Biden’s inner circle: “It’s hard for an adviser to be honest with the principal. If he had asked me, I would have told him, ‘Do one term and you’re done to preserve your legacy.’”
A third Cabinet secretary told Tapper and Thompson that Biden’s top aides “shielded him in every meeting.” From October 2023 on, “the cabinet was kept at bay,” this secretary said.
“For months, we didn’t have access to him. There was clearly a deliberate strategy by the White House to have him meet with as few people as necessary,” the third Cabinet secretary told the authors.
“At one rare meeting during that time,” the authors write that the third secretary “was shocked by how the president was acting. He seemed ‘disoriented’ and ‘out of it,’ his mouth agape.”
The secretary said that Biden’s staff always wanted to keep him happy and shield him from bad news. This was also true when the “bad news was about the president himself, about his deterioration,” the authors write.
“The staff did him wrong,” the Cabinet member said. “If you were with him every day and you knew this was a problem, why didn’t you go to him and say something?”
