Former President Joe Biden’s inner circle was in a “fog of denial” about his cognitive decline and political prospects following his disastrous debate performance last summer, the author of a new tell-all book claimed Friday.
Chris Whipple interviewed several members of the former president’s camp for his new book “Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History,” which details the “stunning extent to which Joe Biden’s inner circle became lost in a kind of fog of denial.”
“They [just] convinced themselves, in effect, they believed what they wanted to believe instead of their lying eyes, even during the debate when everything went south,” Whipple said on Fox News.
“Despite that devastating debate, which was lights out, game over, everybody knew it, (Biden chief of staff Ron) Klain was still all in on Joe Biden’s nomination and re-election and somehow thought he could beat Trump,” he told “America’s Newsroom.”
“That’s still stunning to me, coming from somebody as politically savvy as Ron Klain.”
The author further relayed that some staffers, including Klain, managed to convince themselves that Biden, now 82, had won the debate against then-candidate Donald Trump, which ultimately led to Democrats replacing him on the presidential ticket with his Vice President Kamala Harris.
Klain has since been “in the doghouse” in Biden’s world after the trusted adviser dished to the investigative journalist about the president’s physical and mental condition during pre-debate prep, Whipple claimed in the interview.
During the session at Camp David, Biden was “out of it, he was disengaged, he wandered off and sank into a lounge chair by the pool,” Whipple said, citing Klain.
Klain testified before a House Oversight Committee on Thursday, in which he admitted Biden was “less energetic” and had memory problems during his term in office.
The former top White House aide is one of several former Biden administration staffers to be called before the committee, but he was the only one thus far not to invoke Fifth Amendment rights.
Whipple pushed back against claims that Biden was completely non-functional during his term in office, saying there was “no evidence that he was unable to fulfill the duties of commander in chief.”
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“The notion that this was somehow, you know, Biden’s last year was ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ and that there was non compos mentis and there was a cabal running the country with an autopen is just silly,” he charged.
“The notion that [Republicans are] going to be able to prove that there was this dastardly cover-up on the part of Biden’s inner circle is just crazy to me. I think the answer is that this thing goes nowhere.”
Despite these claims, Whipple’s book chronicles that Team Biden chose not to have the then-president take a cognitive test in February 2024.
Those aides, who Whipple elsewhere characterized as “in a fog of denial,” were confident Biden could pass such an exam.
Whipple previously wrote “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House.”
