The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy and damning piece regarding President Joe Biden’s cognitive health, which did not please the White House. The article is fraught with quotes from Biden’s communications staff and those from Democratic Party congressional leadership who played the role of the good soldier, dispelling any qualms about the president’s mental health, which has become a top voter concern in 2024. From reportedly forgetting his own energy policy meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson to serial slip-ups, the piece doesn’t dispel anything we’ve seen from the president in public.
Before his ouster, Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated a debt ceiling agreement with the White House. McCarthy is quoted saying this isn’t the same man he’s known for years when Biden was in Congress and served as vice president. He’s lost a step. During these talks, it was apparent that Biden’s demeanor and mental acuity changed like the tides. It’s got to the point where even some Democrats feel that the leader of their party is showing his age. And for those Democrats who were interviewed by the publication, the Biden White House ordered them to call the WSJ back to re-emphasize Biden as some titan of American politics (via WSJ):
👀 From the WSJ’s ‘Biden mentally slipping’ piece: pic.twitter.com/s6HMlHg19c
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) June 5, 2024
When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.
In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.
Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks. On some days, he had loose and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely on notes.
“I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy said in an interview. “He’s not the same person.”
The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest person to hold the presidency. His age and cognitive fitness have become major issues in his campaign for a second term, both in the minds of voters and in attacks on him by Republicans. The White House and top aides said he remains a sharp and vigorous leader.
Some who have worked with him, however, including Democrats and some who have known him back to his time as vice president, described a president who appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.
[…]
This article is based on interviews with more than 45 people over several months. The interviews were with Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously, including administration officials and other Democrats who found no fault in the president’s handling of the meetings. Most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans, but some Democrats said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges.
The American people already see it, fellas. It’s why 86 percent of Americans think Biden is too old to run for president again. While the WSJ listed some of Trump’s errors on the mic, Biden’s history is lengthier:
On May 20, during a Rose Garden event celebrating Jewish American Heritage month, Biden said one of the U.S. hostages held in Gaza was a guest at the White House event, before correcting himself. One day earlier, at a campaign event in Detroit, he indicated that he was vice president during the Covid-19 pandemic, which started three years after he left that office. It was one of numerous flubs in the single speech that prompted the White House to make corrections to the official transcript.
In January, he mixed up two of his Hispanic cabinet secretaries, Alejandro Mayorkas and Xavier Becerra. During a February fundraiser in New York, he recounted speaking to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl—who died in 2017—at the 2021 Group of Seven meeting. That same month, at a different fundraiser, he said that during the 2021 G-7 summit he had spoken to former French President François Mitterrand, who died in 1996.
And that’s not including one of the gaffes omitted in this piece: when Biden held that emergency presser when the Robert Hur report was released. It marked the conclusion of the special counsel probe into whether the president mishandled classified documents. No charges were filed, but Hur noted that Biden appeared to suffer from memory issues, which could be a mitigating factor should there be a trial. Biden shot back at these claims but failed. He rambled about the war in Gaza, where he referred to Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Egyptian President, as the president of Mexico.
Hur’s report wasn’t some bombshell moment regarding Biden’s mental acuity. For months, years really, we’ve seen the president’s mental state enter a period of precipitous decline. The only difference is that Hur’s assessment came with the DOJ seal. Hard to argue against that on the campaign trail.
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