“Watergate” reporter Carl Bernstein said that in the past 18 months, White House staff witnessed as many as 20 incidents in which President Biden showed “significant cognitive decline.”
Bernstein discussed Biden’s debate performance on Thursday, seeing the president often appear confused, evasive, misstate facts, and lose his train of thought with his “mouth wide open.”
He discussed the stunning display with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, revealing that staffers close to the president said, “Especially in the last six months, There were episodes of significant cognitive decline and physical weakness.
Bernstein claimed that aides had witnessed cognitive decline “15, 20 times” over the past year and a half.
“They were convinced that what we saw that night – what we saw with Joe Biden – was not a one-off,” he told Cooper.
Carl Bernstein now on CNN:
Multiple sources told him that at least 15 times in the past year and a half “the president has appeared in his horror show (his debate performances).”
Bernstein reports that sources over the past six months… pic.twitter.com/VoSY8xDZpt
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 2, 2024
RELATED: Hunter Biden ‘begged’ his father to stay in campaign after poor debate performance: report
Staffers have witnessed Biden’s cognitive decline for nearly two years
The question here is: Why didn’t President Biden’s aides warn the American people that his cognitive decline was putting the country in danger? When did they tell Carl Bernstein the news?
The prominent journalist said Biden’s former White House chief of staff Ron Klain had in fact warned multiple times that the president had “lost his train of thought” and “couldn’t recover again.”
He then told Cooper about a fundraiser that was so bad that Biden was basically compared to a corpse.
“There was a fundraiser and he was standing on the podium. And then he became very stiff, like almost a rigor mortis, according to people there,” Bernstein said.
“This was almost a year ago at the old Four Seasons restaurant on Park Avenue. He became so stiff that a chair had to be brought in for him to complete the second half of the event.
RELATED: Biden ‘humiliated’ and ‘lack of confidence’ after nightmarish debate performance: NBC
Carl Bernstein says he’s back, baby
Ridiculously, Carl Bernstein said that despite Biden’s repeated bouts of cognitive decline, his Monday speech on the Supreme Court immunity case was the president’s “absolute best.”
Although Biden only spoke through a teleprompter for four minutes, he refused to answer questions and appeared to be “tanned” by staff to make him look better than he did during the debate.
You may recall our reporting that the president’s aides were upset that he was wearing “makeup that made him look pale” during the debate.
“I think what these guys have been saying is, ‘Yeah, he’s great when we see him, like we saw tonight,'” Bernstein explained. “But he also has these inexplicable moment…”
Of course, Biden’s Supreme Court statement came at 7:45 p.m., which may explain why he was unable to speak for more than four minutes.
An Axios report earlier in the day said White House staff found the president was most active between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Son Hunter Biden and first lady Jill Biden implored the president to stay in the race and remain in power, hinting at their influence over the administration.
Bernstein said the cognitive decline Biden has shown shows the country is “dealing with two groups of people in one person.”
“According to the people I talk to, this really needs to be explored,” he said. “I think a lot of leading Democrats believe this, including some who say otherwise. But this is an issue that’s not going away.
If only there was some kind of award-winning investigative journalist who could get a handle on this. Or actual members of the media who are not the White House’s de facto publicists.
