After Joe Biden‘s horrendous debate performance, current and former aides are saying the quiet part out loud and revealing what the President is like behind the scenes.
The White House and campaign blame a ‘cold’ for Biden’s low and, at times, hard-to-understand speaking voice. Others say this is what the President is like on a day-to-day basis now.
Former White House deputy director of photography Chandler West wrote in an Instagram story: ‘It’s time for Joe to go.’
‘I know many of these people and how the White House operates,’ West added. ‘They will say he has a ‘cold’ or just experienced a ‘bad night,’ but for weeks and months, in private, they have all said what we saw last night — Joe is not as strong as he was just a couple of years ago.’
Biden’s campaign tried to brush-off the issue and claimed the car crash performance was merely a ‘slow start.’
Vice President Kamala Harris was pressed in a tense post-debate interview on what Biden is like every day.
‘The person we saw tonight, the president we saw tonight on that stage: Is that how he is every day?’ CNN host Anderson Cooper asked Harris.
‘The Joe Biden that I work with every day is someone who, as I have said, has performed in a way that has been about bringing people into the Oval Office, Republicans and Democrats, to compromise in a way that is extraordinary these days, because it just doesn’t happen, but Joe Biden can make it happen,’ she replied, completely avoiding the essence of the question.
West, who was in his position at the White House from January 2021 to May 2022, told Axios: ‘The debate was not the first bad day, and it’s not gonna be the last.’
Reporters have complained for years about access to the president and claim wranglers are working to keep him with as little off-script time with the press as possible.
Speculation is swirling that those closest to the President, mainly First Lady Jill Biden, were shielding him since he took office – especially after his limitations were on full display at the debate on Thursday night.
A former White House residence official told Axios Jill was ‘so protective of the president’ and the first lady’s top aide Anthony Bernal ‘just protects her, and they often wouldn’t let us do anything for them.’
‘The separation between the family and the residence staff was so big, so divided,’ the former official added. ‘It’s not supposed to be and usually isn’t, even in the Trump White House.’
Since the first few months in office, residence staff felt that Biden’s closest allies were trying to keep anything about his health on the down low.
For example, during a very hot independence day celebration on the South Lawn on July 4, 2021, Biden went back into the White House where the door was abruptly shut behind him so butlers and other residence staff were blocked from aiding the President.
Aides suggested Biden was overheated, but it raised suspicion among staff and a consensus that they were creating a barrier around health-related issues.
A poll released Sunday reveals 72 percent of voters don’t think Biden has the cognitive faculties for another term in office. This is a seven percent increase from the same poll taken earlier in June before the debate.
Former White House physician Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) has repeatedly brought Biden’s cognitive and physical health into question.
He suggested that debate prep for seven days at Camp David was a way to get the drug cocktail just right before the showdown with Trump.
