Disconnected, apathetic and weak. These are the three words that define the last few weeks of President Joe Biden, who since last Friday has suffered a tsunami of criticism for his disastrous performance in the presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia, where unanimously former President Donald Trump came out stronger.
From that day on, the Democratic Party went into crisis. Publicly, while important voices in the party backed the president, some congressmen have already asked Biden to withdraw from the race, and progressive media spared no effort to try to force a withdrawal of candidacy. Privately, the situation is even more dense, with allies, financiers and party members debating whether or not it is possible to change the nominee at this stage of the game. Meanwhile, the White House is scrambling hour by hour to control the damage of a dire debate and dispel doubts about the president’s fitness. Likewise, campaign officials are holding constant meetings with allies insisting that Biden is the only one who can defeat Trump in November.
Internally, however, the cracks are evident. Biden has closed ranks with his family, even adding Hunter Biden among his advisers, and people close to him have gone to the media to speak on condition of anonymity and express concern about the Democratic front-runner’s physical and mental state.
In a report, The New York Times charted how people close to Biden have described the president as a man who, at times, remains lucid and, quite the opposite, tends to lapse into constant disconnects at private meetings and public events.
“But in interviews, people in the room with him more recently said that the lapses seemed to be growing more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome,” reads the NYT, which quotes people close to Biden who, because of the sensitivity of the matter, spoke on anonymity.
In particular, many of those interviewed described the president as often starring in “awkward events” that are unpredictable, especially when he was in a large crowd or tired after a grueling day. That was the case in the final weeks leading up to the debate.
Biden, 81 (he turns 82 in November), had a busy schedule, full of marathon trips, long commutes, fundraising events and important meetings where the president’s physical deterioration could be denoted. In particular, Biden fared poorly in Europe, being in evidence before Western leaders and even veterans who described him as exhausted.
The newspaper report reads that Biden, during the G7 summit in Italy, generated allied heads of state to become “sensitive” about the president’s vulnerability, who had been perceptive during private meetings, but very lost at public events.
“Ms. Meloni and the other leaders were acutely sensitive to Mr. Biden’s physical condition, discussing it privately among themselves, and they tried to avoid embarrassing him by slowing their own pace while walking with the president. When they worried that he did not seem poised and cameras were around, they closed ranks around him physically to shield him while he collected himself,” the NYT detailed, citing a senior European official.
This person, who was present during the summit, said Biden’s physical condition had noticeably deteriorated since the previous fall. In general, he described the Europeans as being “shocked” by how Biden appeared, with whom it was very difficult to hold a conversation, and at times, he seemed “out of it.”
In France, Biden made no better impressions.
In Normandy, he met former soldiers brought to France by a veterans’ group. People who attended the event described Biden as “disoriented.” This was epitomized when the president turned away from the American flag during one of the ceremonies when “Taps” was played instead of looking at it.
There were also awkward moments. For example, when French President Emmanuel Macron made sure Biden walked safely down a ramp as he greeted veterans.
One of them, 98-year-old Bill Casassa, who was honored at the Normandy ceremony and supports Trump, said Biden looked ill when he saluted him.
“He did not appear any different to me in person than he does on television — and that is as a person who is fragile and not really in charge,” Casassa said.
The NYT also detailed an erratic Biden meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, where the Democratic leader spoke so quietly that it was nearly impossible to hear him and also mistakenly claimed that a new wave of aid was intended to rebuild the country’s power grid.
The NYT explained that Biden’s increasingly common errors compelled the White House to periodically release corrected transcripts of his remarks, fixing erroneous mentions of places, people or dates. The administration did this in the days after the debate when Biden confused France and Italy when talking about war veterans at a fundraiser.
Overall, the debate and its disconnects in recent weeks prompted people around him to express concern about whether the president’s mental decline accelerated as of late, according to the NYT.
“Several advisers and current and former administration officials who see Mr. Biden regularly but not every day or week said they were stunned by his debate performance because it was the worst they had ever seen him,” the paper reads.
Others, who have seen Biden but not routinely, remarked that there was clearly a noticeable physical decline and that the president is no longer the same as when he took office three years ago.
“You don’t have to be sitting in an Oval Office meeting with Joe Biden to recognize there’s been a slowdown in the past two years. There’s a visible difference,” said Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian. “The president can zip around the country like he does. But the White House may only be showing the Biden they want us to see.”
The point Brinkley touches on is, to some extent, quite accurate since Biden is a president who has barely made contact with the press, and when he has, it hasn’t had great results. For example, at a key press conference, just after special prosecutor Robert K. Hur characterized the president as a “well-meaning old man with a bad memory” in his report on classified documents, Biden mistook the president of Egypt for the president of Mexico.
Indeed, Biden’s age and the president’s physical deterioration have prompted strategies with his health and energy in mind, attempting to lessen the stages of disconnection for the country’s leader. According to the NYT, preparations for the debate against Trump, which took place over six days, always began from 11 a.m. onward, with Biden taking an afternoon nap every day.
But despite aides trying to get Biden to arrive in top condition for the debate, the president probably signed off on what is the worst performance in the history of presidential discussions, leaving in evidence a clear physical-cognitive deterioration with less than five months to go before the next general election.