OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A report published this week claimed that President Joe Biden did not start preparing for his debate with former President Donald Trump until after 11 a.m. and was always given time for an afternoon nap each day.
In the weeks and months leading up to President Biden’s debate performance in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.
The report also mentioned incidents where Biden misspoke about military aid to Ukraine, froze up at a Juneteenth event, appeared confused at a D-Day anniversary event in France, and even forgot the name of his own secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
Additionally, the report stated that the White House cut Biden’s debate preparation short by a couple of days before the Thursday event “so he could rest” after a couple of European trips, citing the 81-year-old commander-in-chief’s age as a factor.
“Mr. Biden was drained enough from the back-to-back trips to Europe that his team cut his planned debate preparation by two days so he could rest at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., before joining advisers at Camp David for rehearsals,” the Times reported. “The preparations, which took place over six days, never started before 11 a.m. and Mr. Biden was given time for an afternoon nap each day, according to a person familiar with the process.”
CNN’s Carl Bernstein told Anderson Cooper Monday night that anonymous sources close to Biden had allegedly witnessed “15 or 20 occasions in the last year and a half” similar to what the country saw at last week’s presidential debate, when he appeared vacant, unable to enunciate his words, and confused.
“These are people, several of them who are very close to President Biden who loved him, have supported him and among them are some people who would raise a lot of money for him. And they are adamant that what we saw the other night, the Joe Biden we saw, is not a one-off, that there have been 15, 20 occasions in the last year and a half when the president has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed,” he said.
“And what’s so significant is the people that this is coming from, and also how many people around the president are aware of such incidents, including some reporters incidentally who have witnessed some of them,” said the famed reporter who earned his reputation along with then-fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in exposing the Nixon-era Watergate scandal.
The 80-year-old veteran journalist claimed that his sources warned then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain about instances where the president has “lost his train of thought” and “can’t pick it up again” over the past year.
