In a new book, top Biden aide describes ‘out of it’ president before Trump debate
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In a new book, Joe Biden’s former White House chief of staff paints a devastating picture of the then US president’s mental and physical state before the debate with Donald Trump that sent his 2024 campaign into a tailspin, resulting in his relinquishing the Democratic nomination to Kamala Harris .
According to Klain, it turned out that Biden “didn’t know what Trump had been saying and couldn’t grasp what the back and forth was”; left preparation and fell asleep by the pool; obsessed about foreign leaders, saying “these guys say I’m doing a great job as president so I must be a great president”; “didn’t really understand what his argument was on inflation”; and “had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job”.
As described by Klain to the reporter Chris Whipple, at one point Biden had an idea.
“If he looked perplexed when Trump talked, voters would understand that Trump was an idiot. Klain replied: ‘Sir, when you look perplexed, people just think you’re perplexed. And this is our problem in this race.”
Whipple’s book, Uncharted : How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Biden is reportedly planning his own book but Whipple’s blockbuster is not even the first such volume to hit the shelves. This week saw the publication of Fight, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, which also contains extensive reporting on Biden’s decline and Harris’s struggle to win over party elites.
Like Parnes and Allen, Whipple reports both sides of a campaign Trump won despite a criminal conviction, civil penalties including one related to an allegation of rape, and indictments over election subversion and retention of classified information.
But Whipple focuses another harsh spotlight on Biden, an octogenarian president long beset by questions about his fitness for office.
Last week, Whipple told Politico : “I have fresh reporting on an hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis of Biden’s final days, and obviously his decline is a major part of the story.
“I happen to think that to call it a ‘cover-up’ is simplistic. I think it was stranger and way more troubling than that. Biden’s inner circle, his closest advisers, many of them were in a fog of delusion and denial. They believed what they wanted to believe.”
In early 2024, as the campaign warmed up, Klain was among those who said he believed Biden was the right candidate to beat Trump a second time, telling the New York Times: “If I thought he wasn’t the right candidate to beat Donald Trump, I wouldn’t be for him running. But I think he is the right candidate.”
Even after the disastrous debate, by his own telling to Whipple, Klain believed Biden should have stayed in the race – a statement that jars with Klain’s account of debate prep at Camp David.
“At his first meeting with Biden in Aspen Lodge, the president’s cabin,” Whipple writes, Klain “was startled. He’d never seen him so exhausted and out of it. Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool.
“That evening Biden met again with Klain and his team, [Biden aides] Mike Donilon, Steve Richetti, and Bruce Reed. ‘We sat around the table,’ said Klain. ‘[Biden] had answers on cards, and he was just extremely exhausted. And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with Nato leaders.’”
Klain, Whipple writes, “wondered half-seriously if Biden thought he was president of Nato instead of the US. ‘He just became very enraptured with being the head of Nato,’ he said. That wouldn’t help him on Capitol Hill because, as Klain noted, ‘domestic political leaders don’t really care what [Emmanuel] Macron and [Olaf] Scholz think.’”
Klain, fellow aides and visitors including the film mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg tried to get Biden into shape. Two mock debates were organized, focusing on domestic policy.
“The first was scheduled to last 90 minutes but Klain called it off after 45. The president’s voice was shot and so was his grasp of the subject. All he really could talk about was his infrastructure plan and how he was rebuilding America and 16 million jobs. He had nothing to say about his agenda for a second term.”
Klain says Biden grew irritable, saying he would not make promises as he would be criticized for failing to deliver. Klain says he tried to persuade Biden to run on unfinished business, including his attempt to “subsidize state and local efforts to do childcare and bring down the cost to $20 a day. And you ought to try to fight for it again.”
Tags
Who is online
67 visitors
Ron Klain, former White House Chief of Staff, on Biden last August: “He’s clearly up to the job. He’s doing it every day. He’s doing it successfully."
Time to cash in on the biggest scandal in recent American history for the Klains and Tappers of the world.
I can't imagine spending four years shilling for this guy and now having the people who lied to them selling books to them like its no big deal. Progressives seem happy enough with having been played for fools though.
It seems the folks that said Biden was capable are the same ones saying everything Trump does is bad. They obviously have no credibility yet wonder why people don't take them at their word or twisted opinion..
Therefore, what, though? They should have removed him? Then you would have had President Kamala Harris. Not only would you have had whatever policies and leadership she would have brought to the job, but as the existing, incumbent president, she likely would have had a much better chance of winning the 2024 election. Be careful what you wish for.
Well yeah. That's their constitutional duty isn't it? Or not, you know, spend years lying to the public about it, at least. I'm not a progressive, so the "ends justify the means" type of result doesn't appeal to me. That Democrats in government and their allies in the media spent years gaslighting the public about the mental health of Joe Biden isn't suddenly okay because it ended up helping Tump win.
. Be careful what you wish for.
As an American, I wish an entire Party and their allies in the supposedly objective media didn't engage in a gigantic conspiracy to lie to the American people to try and steal an election for a mentally incompetent puppet. That the Democrats conspiracy destroyed people's trust in governmental institutions and put a bullet in the brain of media credibility should be something everyone agrees is a bad thing. But, after watching the Democrats the last decade, I guess teaching the entire population that the government and media lie to them and can't be trusted is the actual goal of the Democratic Party.
I wish the Democrats would take some accountability instead of having the effrontery to be mad when Trump lies. But all they ever do is say "move on" when their massive lies are no longer worth telling. THey just torch their credibility over and over while simultaneously self righteously demanding people trust them. Just an insane cycle and its why someone so unpopular as Trump could win an election. The Democrats are even being liars then he is, as this conspiracy to lie about Biden's health demonstrates.
Hahahahahah, you are still worried about this??? The world is coming off of its wheels and you are worried about what was, I am more worried about what is in front of us than what has been and we can do absolutely nothing about.
The most predictable response ever. It perfectly encapsulates why trump was elected again.