There have been repeated reports about Joe Biden's alleged downsizing during his term. A new book now describes in detail how poor the then-US president's health would have been, and how his entourage tried to cover it up. Staffers who are considering putting him in a wheelchair if he is re-elected report that he no longer recognizes his longtime friend, Hollywood star George Clooney. A new book about former President Joe Biden paints a grim picture of a decline in office.
For the book about the end of Biden's presidency, respected journalists Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios said they interviewed more than 200 people close to Biden and the Democratic Party, most of them after the election defeat. Biden himself, 82, had recently denied reports of a downsizing. After Biden fell once in front of cameras in 2023 and grew increasingly unsteady on his feet, the president's close advisers discussed whether to persuade Biden to use a wheelchair, according to The Hill, which had excerpts from the book. However, they later decided that campaigning against Republican Donald Trump would not have been politically feasible.
They therefore wanted to postpone it until after the election. Instead, they focused on short distances and constant accompaniment. Until the last day of his presidency, Biden and his closest confidants refused to admit that his energy, cognitive abilities, and communication skills had significantly declined, the book's authors wrote in The New Yorker. "Even worse, they tried to hide this through various means." As an example of mental lapses, the authors cite an encounter with Hollywood star Clooney, whom the president has known personally for many years. In June 2024, when Biden returned from a G7 summit in Italy, he reportedly appeared at a fundraising gala hosted by Clooney.
Biden apparently didn't recognize the world-famous actor when he stood in front of him and only greeted him by default. "You know George," a presidential aide whispered. "Yeah, yeah," the president told the star and host of the charity event. "George Clooney," the aide repeated again. Clooney was reportedly surprised that Biden looked so old and didn't recognize him. After Biden presented a disastrous debate performance against Trump in late June, Clooney published a widely noted article in the New York Times on July 10 titled "I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Candidate," in which he called on Biden to withdraw. On July 21, Biden withdrew from the US presidential race, leaving the field to his vice president, Kamala Harris.
A former senior Harris campaign official, David Plouffe, harshly criticized Biden's late withdrawal in the book. "We were so like the party of Biden," the authors quote him as saying. The 100 days from withdrawal to the election were too short. Biden Again Denies Decline A spokesperson for Biden, who did not want to be identified, told the news site Axios: "Yes, there were physical changes as he aged, but signs of aging are not evidence of mental disability."
Biden himself had again rejected the accusation of cognitive decline during his time in the White House a few days earlier during a television appearance. Reports of a supposedly drastic deterioration in his condition in his final year in office were false and baseless, he said. The book, titled "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Decision to Run Again" (in German under the title "Hubris – Decay, Cover-Up, and Joe Biden's Fatal Decision"), will be published next week.
