Ever since President Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance from last Thursday, there's been a flurry of media reports signaling what we've known all along. Even Democrats who engaged in gaslighting up until this point are coming forward, with POLITICO putting out a headline on Tuesday morning fittingly titled "'We’ve all enabled the situation': Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate." Such a report specifically challenges the idea that Biden is a nice old man, especially with what a "senior administration official" has to say.
As a telling part of the report mentions [Emphasis added]:
But inside the White House, Biden’s growing limitations were becoming apparent long before his meltdown in last week’s debate, with the senior team’s management of the president growing more strictly controlled as his term has gone on. During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings they’ll deliver to Biden, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information being presented in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction.
“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” said one senior administration official. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared s**tless of him.”
The official said, “He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it.”
In covering that part of the article, Bonchie at our sister site of RedState pointed to how there's even more evidence of how it appears that the president has dementia. "The problem with that claim is that it's such obvious nonsense. Biden is clearly sundowning, and if this quote from Politico is true, it sure seems like the cause is dementia," Bonchie wrote with original emphasis.
POLITICO also brings up issues with the president in the context of not just the debate, but what what his fellow Democrats have known and kept from the American people. It looks like the debate forced plenty to admit what they had previously tried to deny. To say they've "enabled" the predicament would be to put it politely.
"That the president’s difficulties came as such a shock was largely the result of how effectively his top aides and the White House on the whole has, for three and a half years, kept him in a cocoon — far away from cameras, questions and more intense public scrutiny," the piece also mentions.
This official isn't the only one mentioned in the report. As it later mentions:
This article was based on interviews with more than two dozen people, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive subject. The White House disputed the characterization of Biden as isolated, asserting that he frequently seeks input from policy and political staff and that briefings often include as many as eight to 10 people. They specifically disputed the claim that Biden is protected from dissenting opinions, noting that it’s been the job of a staff secretary in every administration to make sure the president gets all of the information he needs and nothing extraneous. Senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates denied that briefing materials have been curated to avoid upsetting Biden, calling that suggestion “false.”
But now, after Biden’s abysmal performance in the first debate, even some White House staffers are among a growing group of Democratic lawmakers, fundraisers, operatives and activists who have concluded — with sudden clarity — that the cloistered Biden inner sanctum itself is to blame for their current predicament.
Other officials are also named, in order to be blamed. Biden's family members, who have been the ones propping him up and keeping him in the race, also have no problem placing the blame on others. First Lady Jill Biden and the hold she has on the president is also mentioned elsewhere in the report.
Having the same people involved is reportedly why the situation isn't working out:
Even the president’s family, which gathered Sunday at Camp David for a previously scheduled portrait session with photographer Annie Leibovitz and private conversations about where to go from here, was pointing the finger at long-standing members of the senior team: senior adviser Anita Dunn, one of several proponents of the earlier debate, and former chief of staff Ron Klain, who oversaw the week of debate prep at Camp David. But Biden himself told those aides he wasn’t blaming them, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
“The whole planning, preparation was political malpractice,” Democratic megadonor John Morgan said in an interview, laying blame on “the cabal” of the president’s closest aides, including Klain, Dunn and her husband, Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer. “I think he has a misplaced trust in these three people, and I believe he has from the inception.”
It’s not just those aides. Democrats frustrated with Biden’s insular senior team are well acquainted with the longtime aides who continue to have the president’s ear: Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, as well as Ted Kaufman and Klain on the outside. “It’s the same people — he has not changed those people for 40 years,” said one Democratic operative and close adviser to several members of Congress, who blamed the entire group for refusing to shift course even as Biden trailed Trump for months in the polls. “All these guys running the campaign from the White House is not working.”
As a Democratic strategist in a battleground state put it: “The number of people who have access to the president has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. They’ve been digging deeper into the bunker for months now.” And, the strategist said, “the more you get into the bunker, the less you listen to anyone.”
These names ought to sound familiar, like former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. There's another name, though, Mike Donilon. As we highlighted last month, over a week before the debate, Donilon's name was referenced in an Axios report covering how some Democrats are skeptical of Donilon's methods.
Where the debate comes in further is how little people involved with Biden knew, other than a select few. And then it blew up in their faces:
But now, after Biden’s abysmal performance in the first debate, even some White House staffers are among a growing group of Democratic lawmakers, fundraisers, operatives and activists who have concluded — with sudden clarity — that the cloistered Biden inner sanctum itself is to blame for their current predicament.
By the time Biden’s campaign proposed two debates with Trump, many White House staffers had no idea it was in the works, according to three administration officials. The plan and quiet negotiations with networks had been especially tightly held by the president’s small inner circle, spread between the West Wing and his Wilmington-based campaign headquarters.
“Everyone was told this was for the best,” said a White House staffer. “Now, it’s the worst possible outcome. And we’re all trying to figure out why the people who know him best and make all the decisions didn’t seem to anticipate that this might happen.”
Following the debate, the pervasive view throughout much of the party is of Biden’s inner circle as an impenetrable group of enablers who deluded themselves about his ability to run again even as they’ve assiduously worked to accommodate his limitations and shield them from view.
The report also mentions how aides have tried to shield the president, specifically when it comes "limiting his exposure to the media and outside advice." Towards the ends of the long and damning article, there's more of that:
Biden hasn’t done another press conference like that and has subjected himself to fewer sit-down interviews than any of his recent predecessors. Over his first three years in office, he did just one interview with a print reporter; he’s done two more this year. And the White House has also spurned requests from most TV networks, even turning down the traditional Super Bowl pregame interview this year with CBS. The president’s senior advisers have long been convinced that in a fractured media environment, there was far less upside with those interviews because their influence had diminished — and too high a risk.
Those aides didn’t want Biden frequently facing tough questions, preferring him to sit for friendly interviews with podcasters, social media stars and other influencers. Bates noted that Biden has done 43 interviews so far this year and pointed to Biden’s habit of semi-frequently fielding shouted questions from the press as proof of his media availability, though those encounters are less substantive and have also dwindled in recent months.
We've heard of this before, no matter how much the White House tries to justify it. As Leah covered earlier on Tuesday, a fellow with The New York Times was interviewing voters but his interview was cut short by a Biden staffer when the conversation turned critical of the president.
Even with these reports and more, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre still continues to gaslight the America, just as she did during Tuesday's press briefing, the first since last Thursday's debate.
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