Michael LaRosa, a former White House staffer, now admits that the campaign was "gaslighting" voters during President Joe Biden's 2024 campaign, Mediaite reported. LaRosa said they were in strict "denial" to the public and the media.
LaRosa had an inside view of the president's condition as the press secretary for then-first lady Jill Biden. The 81-year-old incumbent president was forced to give up his reelection bid after a humiliating debate performance against Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the official narrative was that he was "sharp as a tack" despite his advanced age. Now that there's nothing to lose, people like LaRosa and CNN's Jake Tapper are ready to come clean.
Tapper teamed up with Axios reporter Alex Thomson in a new tell-all book, Original Sin, that spills the secrets of the White House's efforts to keep Biden's cognitive decline under wraps. LaRosa spoke with Tara Palmeri from Puck about what it was like behind the scenes.
When Palmeri interviewed LaRosa Wednesday at the Science Institute at American University, he denied a "cover-up" but said the lying began "Day 1" about the problems both with Biden's age and his polling numbers. "There are some things that are true, I mean, like the gaslighting," LaRosa said.
"There was a lot of denial of the polling. And I will use the term gaslighting because that’s what they were doing, the campaign, former colleagues," LaRosa added.
"The message to everybody was to make sure that you tell people it’s too early. It’s too early. These polls don’t mean anything. Well, it became too early. And these polls don’t mean anything for about a year and a half. The polls, the numbers never moved," he went on.
"But by denying the data that was out there publicly, by denying the really insightful journalism, you know, they were actually demeaning to a lot of the people. But it was the data denial that really bothered me because we loved polling when we were running because we were always ahead," LaRosa said.
LaRosa said the Biden campaign's desperation got the best of it. "All of a sudden, because they’re always behind, the polls are meaningless. And they were attacking The New York Times. They did do a lot of gaslighting of people," LaRosa shared.
"And I think if you were watching MSNBC, you probably believed them and were probably pretty shocked. But if you were consuming information, consuming data, and looking at it objectively, and trying to interpret it and process it objectively, then none of it was surprising," LaRosa added.
The campaign took to hiding Joe Biden from the public. "The president’s team was scared to death of impromptu, unscripted, un-rehearsed, unpracticed, un-choreographed, anything, they couldn’t compete for the attention economy. They just couldn’t do it," LaRosa admitted.
He said Joe Biden "loves TV" but couldn't be trusted. "Biden needed the press. When he needed them the most, they didn’t trust him, they gave him the benefit of the doubt and they put their foot on the gas and never took it off. And he was politically dead," LaRosa added.
It was obvious to anyone honest enough to say it that age got the best of Joe Biden. The only surprising thing about LaRosa's confession is that even insiders are willing to admit their role in what's arguably the most significant coverup in presidential history.
