The mainstream media has focused heavily on President Joe Biden's cognitive state since his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump last week.
However, reporters have known for a while that the 81-year-old Biden has been dealing with diminished mental capabilities, according to a New York magazine story Thursday.
The magazine’s White House correspondent, Olivia Nuzzi, wrote that in January she began hearing Democrat officials, activists, and donors expressing concern that Biden might not "make it to Election Day" after encounters with the president.
Nuzzi ended her column by recounting her experience at a reception before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April. She and other reporters waited to have their photo taken with the president.
"Up close, the president does not look quite plausible," Nuzzi wrote. "It’s not that he’s old. We all know what old looks like. [Sen] Bernie Sanders is old. [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell is old. Most of the ruling class is old. The president was something stranger, something not of this earth."
The reporter wrote that her "heart stopped as I extended my hand to greet the president. I tried to make eye contact, but it was like his eyes, though open, were not on. His face had a waxy quality."
When Biden left, reporters made guesses about how dead the president appeared to be.
"Forty percent?" one asked.
The New York column describes other detailed incidents that left people questioning Biden’s cognitive ability.
Many Democrats, party donors, and media pundits have called on Biden to stop his pursuit of the 2024 Democratic Party presidential nomination following his disastrous debate performance.
Two nights after the June 27 CNN debate, Biden appeared at New Jersey Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy’s house to speak to about 50 donors and ease their concerns about his candidacy.
Murphy told Biden "[w]e’re all with you 1,000 percent" and called the president "America’s comeback kid."
"The callback to Bill Clinton articulated the nervous, defensive energy that animated the evening," Nuzzi wrote. "But Biden had not face planted in a pit of bad press because of a mistake in his personal life. His problems would be much trickier to solve. A sex scandal might help him right now, in fact."
Nuzzi also wrote that people who have met the president in social settings sometimes were stunned by what they saw.
"Longtime friends of the Biden family, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, were shocked to find that the president did not remember their names," she wrote.
"At a White House event last year, a guest recalled, with horror, realizing that the president would not be able to stay for the reception because, it was clear, he would not be able to make it through the reception."
The event left the guest stunned.
"The guest wasn't sure they could vote for Biden," Nuzzi wrote, "since the guest was now open to an idea that they had previously dismissed as right-wing propaganda: The president may not really be the acting president after all."
Reuters contributed to this story.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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