American voters think Biden ‘not mentally fit’
A damning new poll has revealed what American voters really think about Joe Biden amid growing concerns about his “cognitive state”.
More questions about President Biden’s cognitive state are emerging as a new poll showed a jaw-dropping 72 per cent of registered voters do not believe he is mentally fit for the job.
While many Democrats were left flabbergasted and sent into a tailspin by Biden’s debate debacle last week, the 81-year-old president’s cognitive slips have been nothing new to his inner circle, the New York Post reports.
White House aides have been meticulously working behind the scenes throughout his presidency to minimise his exposure to situations where his cognitive slip-ups could flare up in public and to adapt the day-to-day of the presidency to the needs of an octogenarian.
The commander-in-chief is seen as prone to absent-minded gaffes and fatigue outside of six hours a day — between 10am and 4pm — and while travelling abroad, Axios said in a new report.
From shorter stairs when boarding Air Force One to guiding him on jaunts over concerns about his gait and proclivity for appearing lost, his team has reportedly been forced to step up its efforts over time to shield him more and more.
“I know many of these people and how the White House operates,” said Chandler West, the White House’s former deputy director of photography under Biden, in an Instagram story after the debate, Axios reported.
“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 said.
“The debate was not the first bad day, and it’s not gonna be the last,” said the ex-administration staffer, who had a first-hand seat to the president’s behaviour.
“It’s time for Joe to go.”
The problem is, “A true succession plan does not exist,” a senior Democrat campaign adviser admitted to CNN. “That’s what makes all of this not just heartbreaking but very problematic.”
The White House has hit back at these characterisations of Biden’s mental acuity.
“Not only does the President perform around the clock, but he maintains a schedule that tires younger aides, including foreign trips into active war zones, and he proves he has that capacity by delivering tangible results that pundits had declared impossible,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.
Bates cited NATO expansion, “outmanoeuvring China to bring manufacturing home,” and “out-negotiating Republican officials as they try to impose recession-causing MAGAnomics policies and radical abortion bans” as evidence that Biden is up to the job.
In addition to his mental issues, the elderly president reportedly often wears orthopaedic shoes and has undergone physical therapy to help combat stiffness, the White House physician previously disclosed.
After his hard fall during last year’s Air Force Academy commencement caused by him tripping over a sandbag onstage, aides have been careful to avert any repeats.
Post-debate footage showed the president being helped off stage slowly by his wife after the 90-minute bout against former President Donald Trump, 78.
A former White House staffer who was tasked with helping to tend to the president’s accommodations in the executive mansion told Axios that senior officials often “wouldn’t let us do anything for them,” suggesting it is to keep Biden’s issues on the down-low.
“In every administration, there are individuals who would prefer to spend more time with the President and senior officials,” Bates said, crediting Biden for “achieving historic results for the American people because of his determination, values, and experience.”
Press access in Biden’s White House has also been remarkably limited.
Three and a half years into his presidency, Biden has held the fewest solo press conferences of any president since at least the late 1980s — despite several raging wars, a migrant border crisis and economic upheaval, according to data from the American Presidency Project.
Moreover, he rarely does sit-down interviews with news outlets. One rare interview he gave to Time Magazine that was published earlier this month featured him conflating Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as making a series of other factual blunders.
“I have been very critical of the campaign strategy and the White House and their decision to sort of bubble-wrap him in the last year — you can’t run for president by duck and cover,” a former spokesman for the first lady, Michael LaRosa recently vented on Fox News’ “Media Buzz.”
Several reporters have alleged that Biden campaign officials have sought to dissuade them from talking with rally attendees who were questioning the wisdom of having him as nominee.
At times, Biden has quipped about his handlers demanding that he limit his own question-and-answer sessions during press sprays. In September, an official was heard telling the press that the conference was over — while Biden was rambling on. Staffers appeared to turn on music to signal the end as well.
Behind the scenes, First Lady Jill Biden has reportedly lashed out at aides who failed to cut short pressers where Biden was making gaffes.
This article first appeared on the New York Post and was republished here with permission.
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