An aide to former President Joe Biden has publicly admitted that the administration misled the American public. The admission acknowledges that the administration engaged in gaslighting tactics to downplay the president’s health and age. The admission has raised ongoing questions about the Biden administration's transparency and handling of critical issues during its office. Despite many Democrats raising concerns about Biden’s health, his own administration chose to ignore the problem.
Michael LaRosa told Puck News that the Biden administration considered the 81-year-old president’s age a real issue, yet his staff continued to lie to the public and dismiss such claims. He remarked that Biden’s team was terrified whenever the former president participated in an unrehearsed or unscripted interview.
“The president’s team was scared to death of impromptu, unscripted, unrehearsed, unpracticed, unchoreographed anything,” LaRosa said. “They couldn’t compete in the attention economy. They didn’t have any idea how. And they didn’t have the vessel in Biden, who would have done anything. He loves TV. He loves doing stuff. It was the orbit that didn’t trust the candidate.”
As the 2024 election approached, concerns about Biden’s health became an increasing issue for Americans, with even mainstream media finding it difficult to overlook. The situation intensified after his disastrous debate performance against President Donald Trump in June. Consequently, calls for Biden to end his campaign surged, and support for his re-election started to decline steadily.
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“Biden needed the press, but when he needed the press the most, they didn’t trust him. And then the press put their foot on the gas and never took it off, and he was politically dead in a month,” he told the outlet.
In December, I covered a report that claimed Biden was allegedly too "mentally fatigued" to take a critical call from the House Armed Services Committee Chair in the lead-up to the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden was reportedly so fatigued that he missed an important phone call with then-House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash) in 2021, right before the United States pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving significant casualties, including 13 American service members dead.
Still, LaRosa said that calling it a “cover-up” of Biden’s age is a “little harsh and exaggerated.” He claimed that every politician lies about their age, pointing out that they all wear make-up on TV.
However, he didn’t hesitate to admit that he was aware that Biden's age was an issue from the first day he joined the campaign in 2019.
“There are some things that are true, like the gaslighting,” LaRosa continued. “There was a lot of denial of the polling. All of the polling in the spring of 2023 and then the fall of 2023 showed that there was no real depth of support from his own party, let alone independents and Republicans. And Biden had been tied, or within the margin of error, with Trump—who had, by that point, how many court hearings? How many indictments? The fact that he was so close was always a problem, but they were kind of in denial.”
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