President Biden struggled to remember basic words — or even keep his feet — at campaign fundraisers more than a year prior to dropping out of the 2024 race, with witnesses describing him as “frighteningly awful” and resembling a “senile grandfather,” a new book has revealed.
At a Silicon Valley fundraiser in June 2023, the commander in chief “could not wait to sit down and only took two pre-arranged questions,” a Democratic donor is quoted as saying by Bob Woodward in “War.”
Despite bringing a stack of note cards with pre-printed answers, the then 80-year-old Biden struggled to stay on point and frequently meandered in his speech, attendees claimed.
“It was ‘like your 87-year-old senile grandfather,’ wandering around the room, saying to women guests, ‘your eyes are so beautiful,’” Woodward writes, quoting a guest of the event hosted by Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott.
Strikingly, following a second donor event that same day, host and venture capitalist Steve Westly described the president as “energetic” and insisted that “he woudn’t sit down for two hours,” according to the author
During a different event that same month at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, Biden could not recall the word for “veteran,” and pleaded with the crowd for help describing a person who has “served in the military.”
The New York event, chronicled by Woodward, was first reported in July of this year by the Wall Street Journal.
At other events, guests described their interactions with Biden as “painful.”
On June 27, 2023, husband-and-wife philanthropists Michael and Susie Gelman hosted a “Meet the President” fundraiser at their home in suburban Maryland.
“He never completed a sentence,” said Liberties Journal President Bill Reichblum, who was in attendance.
“He would start to talk about something, jump somewhere else. He told the same story three times in exactly the same way and it meandered so much … Frankly, my impression was there were times it was was though we didn’t exist. He was just rambling and talking as to what came into his head.”
The 46th president had long been haunted by questions about his age and mental acuity. He frequently addressed those concerns with the refrain “watch me” and often joked about his octogenarian status.
But exactly 12 months after supporters at the Maryland event were rattled by Biden behind closed doors, a global audience witnessed the president’s stumbling debate performance against Republican nominee Donald Trump in Atlanta.
Top aides of the president had privately denied that Biden’s cognitive state was deteriorating until the June 27, 2024, debate, Woodward writes.
Before the debate, many of Biden’s allies fended off consternation about his age, with the White House comms shop at one point mounting a campaign ripping viral footage on social media of the president appearing confused as “cheap fakes.”
Maggie Goodlander, a former Justice Department official and wife of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan who is running for Congress in New Hampshire, mused about how she wished she could “record” Biden’s private conversations to counter rumors of mental decline.
Still, there were several allies of Biden who made hay about his age in private.
“You’re f–king up your campaign,” a Hollywood executive told the president, per Woodward. “Every time you get out and walk, people think ‘old.’”
Vice President Kamala Harris recently defended the president over those concerns and implied that his rough debate performance may not have been the only reason he threw in the towel.
“Joe Biden is extremely accomplished, experienced and capable in every way,” Harris argued to NBC News’ Hallie Jackson Tuesday when asked about her past defense of him.
“I have worked with Joe Biden … hours and hours and hours over these four years,” the veep added. “I speak with not only with sincerity but with a real, first-hand account of watching him do this work.”
First lady Jill Biden, an ardent defender of her husband who is known to have helped mask his signs of aging, recently admitted that his not seeking a second term was the “right call.”
Biden is the oldest US president of all time and is set to turn 82 next month. If former President Donald Trump prevails on Nov. 5 and serves out a full term, the Republican will take that title from his rival.
