Former President Joe Biden’s aides had become so concerned about his physical deterioration that they’d discussed him using a wheelchair if he won re-election in 2024, according to a bombshell book out next week.
The private conversations were laid bare in a new book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” co-authored by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN host Jake Tapper, that details the lengths to which the Biden administration and its allies tried to conceal the 46th president’s lack of fitness for office.
“Biden’s physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election,” read an except from “Original Sin” first reported Tuesday by Axios, Thompson’s home publication.
“Given Biden’s age, [his physician Kevin O’Connor] also privately said that if he had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery,” Thompson and Tapper wrote.
The authors also note that O’Connor often argued with Biden aides, trying to get them to build more rest time into the president’s schedule — despite contemporaneous reporting by Thompson that the Democrat only had a six-hour window of peak effectiveness and became “fatigued” and subject to “verbal miscues” outside the hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Biden would not have been the first president to use a wheelchair in office. Franklin Delano Roosevelt required the device after he was left paralyzed from the waist down by polio in 1921. However, the 32nd president was rarely photographed in a wheelchair and made efforts to conceal his reliance on it in public.
The former president, his family and aides have been repeatedly ripped for dismissing growing concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity during his administration.
Biden was dogged by poor polling as he began his abortive re-election run amid widespread fears that his physical stumbles, verbal gaffes and moments of confusion were signs of advanced aging and cognitive decline.
At the time, the White House repeatedly insisted there was no cover-up and that he was in good health.
Lefty media, including Tapper himself, have since come under fire, too, for dismissing concerns about the then-president’s physical and mental ability..
An internal Democratic revolt following a poor debate performance against Donald Trump on June 27, 2024, ultimately led Biden to pull out of the race July 21 and endorse then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
A Biden spokesperson dismissed the book’s claims of a cover-up, saying “Yes, there were physical changes as he got older, but evidence of aging is not evidence of mental incapacity.”
“And so far, we are still waiting for someone, anyone, to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential address where he was unable to do his job because of mental decline. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite — he was a very effective president.”
“Original Sin” hits bookstores May 20.
