A new book pulled back the curtain on former President Joe Biden's mental decline that led Democrats to lose the 2024 presidential election, Fox News reported. In one excerpt, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos recounted how it was "heartbreaking up close" to interview the then-president after his disastrous campaign-ending debate.
The book, "Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History" by Chris Whipple, was released this week. It paints a picture of the Democratic Party's frenzied maneuvering to try to hide how poor Biden's mental acuity was.
Biden's June 27 debate performance against then-candidate Donald Trump made it impossible to continue on as if nothing happened. The author noted that Stephanopoulos was given the task of interviewing Biden on This Week on July 5, which all but sealed the deal for him.
Whipple recounted that the interview with Stephanopoulos was meant to "staunch the bleeding" of Democrats who wanted Biden out. The author noted that Biden was "hoarse and semi-coherent" throughout the interview, which bothered the host.
Rather than smoothing things over, the appearance cemented the notion that Biden was finished. "Stephanopoulos questioned the president gently, like a grandson," Whipple noted.
"Afterward, when I asked the ABC anchor by email for his impressions, he replied: ‘Heartbreaking up close,'" Whipple wrote. Stephanopoulos would later say when asked about it that he didn't think Biden could "serve four more years."
This was after Biden tried to assert his competence during the softball sitdown with Stephanopoulos. "Look, I have a cognitive test every single day," Biden told the host.
"Every day, I’ve had tests. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, I’m running the world. And that’s not — it sounds like hyperbole, but we are the central nation of the world."
Biden insisted that he was in top campaign shape, but Whipple said the truth behind the scenes was far different. "He was absolutely exhausted," Whipple wrote, according to NPR.
"He was unable really to follow what was happening in the campaign. He was tuned out. Early on, he walked out of a [debate preparation] session in the Aspen Lodge, the president's cabin, went over to the pool, sank into a lounge chair, and just fell sound asleep," Whipple wrote.
It was less than a month before he would turn his campaign over to then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the White House in a crushing defeat. Whipple blames those around Biden for not getting him out sooner.
"I think that it's unquestionable that there was just an abdication of leadership starting within that inner circle. The inability of any of those [staffers] to sit the president down and say, 'Look, you need to look at this clear eyed and realize that you're going to be 86 years old and you're not up to this and everybody knows it.' That never happened," Whipple wrote.
It was crystal clear that Biden was suffering from cognitive impairment, but his campaign tried to cover it up. In the end, they couldn't even fool their allies in the leftist media, let alone the voting public.
