Apparently, some of the people closest to President Joe Biden have been keeping a lid on his seemingly discombobulated state, leaving White House staff in the dark.
This may, in part, be why so many Democratic officials seemed caught off guard by the president’s disastrous debate performance last week. While many Americans have been familiar with the gaffe-prone 81-year-old’s mental hiccups, the Democratic establishment reacted with surprise and resignation to the prospect of a second Trump presidency.
Here’s some of what Axios had to report on this story:
Joe Biden‘s close aides have carefully shielded him from people inside and outside the White House since the beginning of his presidency.
Why it matters: The intermittent access has resulted in many current and former White House aides being shocked at the 81-year-old president’s limitations at the debate Thursday night.
Driving the news: Current and former White House aides are feeling whiplash — and now questioning whether Biden could fulfill a second term.
“It’s time for Joe to go.” That’s what Chandler West, the White House’s deputy director of photography from January 2021 to May 2022, wrote in an Instagram story after the debate.
“I know many of these people and how the White House operates. They will say he has a ‘cold’ or just experienced a ‘bad night,’ but for weeks and months, in private, they have all said what we saw last night — Joe is not as strong as he was just a couple of years ago,” West wrote, according to screenshots obtained by Axios.
Reached by phone, West said he wrote the post because “the debate was not the first bad day, and it’s not gonna be the last.” He declined to comment further.
The president and his team have acknowledged Biden had a bad night but said he had a cold.