Ex-White House Insider Admits Biden Campaign ‘Gaslighted’ Public With ‘Denial’ Of President’s Age Concerns: ‘Scared To Death!’
Jill Biden’s ex-press secretary and White House insider Michael LaRosa has admitted the Biden campaign was “gaslighting” the public and the press with its “denial” of concerns surrounding former President Joe Biden’s age and ability which, he admitted, were very real.
Throughout the campaign, top Democrats insisted concern about Biden’s age and mental acuity were an overreaction and media frenzy, even in the wake of his widely criticized debate performance against then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.
During the debate performance, the 81-year-old president struggled—frequently losing his train of thought and stumbling over his words. Yet even as polling and voter interviews at the time suggested public skepticism about Biden’s age was a persistent concern nationwide, many Democratic leaders in Washington circled the wagons and continually avoided addressing it directly.
At an event at the Science Institute at American University on Wednesday, LaRosa spoke out during a seminar hosted by Puck journalist Tara Palmeri.
Palmeri asked the former staffer about Original Sin, a new book by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN anchor Jake Tapper, which offers a scathing critique of the White House’s attempts to cover up concerns related to Biden’s age as he opted to seek a second presidential term.
In his response, LaRosa called out former colleagues for deliberately “gaslighting” on the issue, which he said they were aware of from “Day 1” and criticized the campaign for “attacking” the “insightful journalism” at the New York Times spotlighting the problem and denying the polling data.
Cover-up to me is a little hard, a little harsh. Every politician, everybody, every human being tries to cover up age. We were always, from day one, cognizant that age was an issue.
There are some things that are true, I mean, like the gaslighting. There was a lot of denial of the polling. And I will use the term gaslighting because that’s what they were doing, the campaign, former colleagues. The message to everybody was to make sure that you tell people it’s too early. It’s too early. These polls don’t mean anything. Well, it became too early. And these polls don’t mean anything for about a year and a half. The polls, the numbers never moved.
But by denying the data that was out there publicly, by denying the really insightful journalism, you know, they were actually demeaning to a lot of the people. But it was the data denial that really bothered me because we loved polling when we were running because we were always ahead.
All of a sudden, because they’re always behind, the polls are meaningless. And they were attacking The New York Times. They did do a lot of gaslighting of people. And I think if you were watching MSNBC, you probably believed them and were probably pretty shocked. But if you were consuming information, consuming data, and looking at it objectively, and trying to interpret it and process it objectively, then none of it was surprising.
La Rosa went on to reveal how the internal concern within the campaign was such that they were “scared to death” of letting Biden do interviews with the media.
The president’s team was scared to death of impromptu, unscripted, un-rehearsed, unpracticed, un-choreographed, anything, they couldn’t compete for the attention economy. They just couldn’t do it. They didn’t have any idea. And they didn’t have the vessel either in Biden, by the way, who would have done anything. He loves TV. He loves doing stuff. It was the orbit that did not trust their own candidate.
Biden needed the press. When he needed them the most, they didn’t trust him, they gave him the back foot of the doubt and they put their foot on the gas and never took it off. And he was politically dead.
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