White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has accused the administration of former President Joe Biden of engaging in a cover-up of the previous commander-in-chief’s mental health.
“I can tell you there was certainly a lack of transparency from the former president, from the entire former administration,” she said to reporters on Friday.
“And frankly, a lot of people in this room, when it came to the health in the competence of the former President of the United States, Joe Biden — there was one of the greatest cover-ups and, frankly, political scandals this nation has ever seen. It’s been unraveled in some recent books that are being written by journalists who engaged in that cover-up in scandal, which is quite ironic,” she said.
“But this president is clearly committed to transparency,” she said of President Donald Trump.
“You in this room see him and hear from him on a daily basis. You in this room know from covering him. It’s hard to keep up with him. He is a machine working around the clock every single day. And the physician, after today’s physical, will provide an update on the report in the effort of transparency,” she said.
A bombshell report that was published after the presidential election revealed how the cover-up of Biden’s mental decline was not only more substantial than first thought but went on for much longer than previous reports suggested.
According to The Wall Street Journal, aides to Biden colluded to prevent the public from knowing just how substantial his mental decline was, and the effort to cover it up actually began during his 2020 presidential campaign and continues to this day.
“To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, [aides] told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent,” the WSJ reported. “Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.”
“Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president,” the outlet continued.
The report said senior staff instructed press aides tasked with compiling news clips for President Biden to omit negative stories about him. Meanwhile, the president avoided communicating with his own pollsters, even as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.
Presidents always have gatekeepers, but in Biden’s case, the controls were tighter, and the barriers around him higher, Democratic lawmakers, donors, and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations told the WSJ. Strict limits were placed on who could speak with him, what they could say, and the sources of information he accessed.
The report added that a small group of aides remained close to Biden throughout his presidency, particularly during travel or public appearances.
“They body him to such a high degree,” observed one person familiar with the dynamic, describing the “hand-holding” as unprecedented compared to what other recent presidents have experienced, said the outlet.
“This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations,” the WSJ reported.
According to party insiders, hiding Biden’s diminished condition—especially after many observers pointed it out as far back as his 2020 campaign—has left the Democratic Party mightily damaged, at least in the short to mid term.