Former President Joe Biden denied he suffered cognitive decline while serving in the White House, saying allegations trickling out since he departed his position were off base.
“They are wrong,” Biden said on an episode of ABC's "The View" on Thursday. He was asked about “deeply sourced” books that indicated a sharp decline in his last year in office. “There’s nothing to sustain that.”
Host Whoopi Goldberg brought up Biden’s catastrophic debate that took place in June, though she did not press him on what had happened, instead calling it a “bad night.” Biden sent Democrats into a panic during his debate performance against Donald Trump; at times he couldn’t finish a sentence, stared off into the distance, and declared nonsensically: “We finally beat Medicare.”
Goldberg suggested that some in the party made too much of the episode, and Biden agreed.
“We still were winning the primary. We were still doing everything. The Democratic Party at large didn’t buy into it, but the Democratic leadership and some of the very significant contributors did,” Biden began. He went on to say he left a well-organized campaign to his Vice President Kamala Harris, flush with cash. “But you know what happens, is that it took on a life of its own. I had a very bad — I’m going to say something outrageous, I haven’t lost many debates in my life. I’ve been pretty good at doing that.
“I was sick. I was — no excuse. I had a bad, bad night,” Biden said.
One of the hosts asked the former first lady of allegations in a recent book that she "cocooned" Biden, shielding any infirmities from the public. Some of those details were reported in "Fight," a book by Jonathan Allen of NBC News and Amie Parnes at The Hill.
On Thursday, Jill Biden rejected she was protecting him and said it was hurtful when others depicted her as some kind of Lady Macbeth.
"I saw him all throughout the day, and I did not create a cocoon around him," she said. "I mean, you saw him in the Oval Office. You saw him making speeches. He wasn't hiding somewhere. I didn't have him, you know, sequestered in some place."
Biden’s Thursday appearance alongside Jill Biden marks a ramp-up in his public posture. With his reputation coming under significant criticism, Biden also recently hired Chris Meagher, who previously worked for Pete Buttigieg, in Biden’s White House and in the Defense Department.
Meagher took part in fresh pushback publicly on X recently when he chided a reporter and author of a forthcoming book that promises to detail more episodes of Biden's cognitive decline while in the White House.
"Not a great look hawking a book based on a false premise while accepting an award based on the same false premise," Meagher wrote on X. "Yes, Biden was old, but that’s a lot different than an allegation of mental decline that kept him from being able to do the job, which there is no evidence of.
Biden's contention that rank-and-file Democrats supported his continued candidacy, however, was off base. In the years before the 2024 election, poll after poll demonstrated that Democrats already had concerns about his age and wanted a different candidate.
Before Biden chose to step aside from seeking the Democratic nomination in 2024, his fundraising dried up as donors fled.
Biden said Thursday he could see that he was dividing the party and didn't want that to happen.
In April, Biden traveled to Chicago to make his first public remarks since leaving the presidency. He derided Trump’s policies as heartless and criticized the president’s top lieutenant, billionaire Elon Musk, for calling Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Biden also took shots at Trump on Thursday, saying his first 100 days were the worst of any president.
At one point, he was asked why Trump seemed so fixated on him and blamed him for everything.
Biden said simply: “I beat him.”
