Report: White House Aides Hid Biden’s Apparent Mental Decline from Day 1 of His Presidency

The lack of access to the nation’s oldest-ever president has been well known in Washington — with Biden hosting the fewest large press conferences in modern history and frequently descending into gaffes at the podium when he appeared — but how much the White House made up for the haziness had until now been hidden, according to aides, Democratic lawmakers and donors who spoke with the Wall Street Journal.

Presidential staff formed a tight shell around Biden, 82, right after he took office amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with staff immediately limiting his in-person interactions in January 2021.

But staffers also began making adjustments to daily plans when the president appeared tired or kept stumbling on the world stage — both figuratively and literally.

According to the Journal, a national security official told an aide at the time, “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow.”

Meetings were often scheduled for later in the day — a fact first disclosed after Biden’s debate flop against President-elect Donald Trump, when staff admitted the then-Democratic nominee had difficulty functioning outside a six-hour window that closed around 4 pm daily.

Once inside the room with the president, officials were instructed to make their briefings short and to the point. Private discussions with even some of his top cabinet picks, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, grew more infrequent. 

One cabinet official eventually stopped reaching out to schedule talks with the commander in chief after having been repeatedly rebuffed, an ex-aide revealed.

The White House also hired a voice coach, Hollywood mogul and campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, to try to improve his faint, raspy tone.

Other staffers removed negative reports from Biden’s stack of news for the day, misleading him about the public’s opinion of his job performance — which reached a 70-year low in 2024.

Deputy press secretary Andrew Bates disputed the characterization of his boss.

“President Biden speaks with members of his cabinet daily, and with most members multiple times a week, staying close with them about implementation of key laws and strengthening our national security,” Bates said in a statement.

“President Biden leads a modern administration. Cabinet meetings are an important tradition, but the contemporary work environment means they can be fewer and far between,” Bates added.

But the signs had been there throughout his term in the Oval Office: He frequently relied on notecards, was spotted having large directions printed for him, often mixed up the names of foreign dignitaries or other facts and gaffed when he went off-script or ignored his teleprompter.

The president’s sit-down with Special Counsel Robert Hur over what was later deemed his “willful” retention of classified documents also tested his mental stamina.

Biden was the one who reportedly pushed for the Hur interview, per the WSJ, and staffers backed the decision in hopes of showing that Biden was more cooperative than Trump, then his opponent in the 2024 presidential race.

But the interview prep quickly turned into a headache. Preparation sessions took three hours a day and Biden would forget his “lines” and fluctuate in his energy levels, according to the outlet. A transcript posted after the grueling, two-day affair in October 2023 revealed he forgot the year his son Beau Biden died of brain cancer.

A Bidenworld source dismissed the president’s hazy recall, telling The New York Post, “Every person who has ever prepared for a legal interview has forgotten some of the prep.”

The ring around Biden was equally tight during his brief and unsuccessful re-election campaign, with staffers fielding questions so much, it surprised donors about their degree of control.

The Democratic candidate previously got filled in on his numbers by pollster John Anzalone during his successful 2020 campaign, but by 2024, no survey findings were relayed directly to Biden and were instead passed along through memos to campaign aides.

The withholding of the information particularly concerned Biden campaign pollsters as Trump’s numbers began to tick up.

Campaign staff were also concerned that first lady Jill Biden would outshine the president, even during the 2020 primary, according to the Journal.

“The more you talk her up, the more you make him look bad,” her press secretary at the time, Michael LaRosa, told the outlet he was instructed by Jill’s closest confidant, White House staffer Anthony Bernal.

During her husband’s term, the first lady even tried to stop him from going it alone too long at press conferences, fearing he’d be caught flat-footed by questions as the events dragged on.

“President Biden has earned the most accomplished record of any modern commander-in-chief and rebuilt the middle class because of his attention to policy details that impact millions of lives, his active solicitation of diverse opinions from outside experts, everyday Americans, members of Congress and other elected officials, his cabinet, and historians, and because of his determination to fulfill a big-picture economic agenda that realized major priorities Democrats have worked toward for decades,” Bates added in a statement to The Post.

“During every presidency, there are inevitably some in Washington who do not receive as much time with whomever the president is as they would prefer; but that never means that the president isn’t engaging thoroughly with others, as this president does,” Bates added.