Here Are the Five Biggest Bombshells from The Wall Street Journal’s Deep Dive Into Joe Biden’s Decline

AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy deep dive into President Joe Biden’s decline and how the White House has managed it on Thursday.

“Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden’s case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations,” reported the Journal. “There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed.”

Her are the five biggest bombshells from the story:

CONCERNS STRETCHED BACK TO ‘THE FIRST FEW MONTHS’ OF HIS PRESIDENCY

While many members of Biden World continue to deny that Biden has declined at all — spokesman Andrew Bates commented on the story by rejecting “the notion that Biden has declined” — the Journal claims that staff recognized his limitations early on.

“A sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term,” it reported. “Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.”

It continued:

They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: The exchanges should be short and focused, according to people who received the message directly from White House aides.

Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.

“If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether,” noted the Journal. “On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. ‘He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,’ the former aide recalled the official saying.”

DEMOCRATIC LEADERS NOTICED LEADERSHIP VACUUM

Two Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives went on the record to make note of Biden’s inaccessibility.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) was the chairman of the Armed Services Committee in 2021 and repeatedly tried to speak with Biden ahead of the administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan to express concerns.

The president never took his call, and the disastrous withdrawal ended up dragging Biden’s approval rating underwater, where it stayed for the rest of his presidency.

“The Biden White House was more insulated than most,” Smith said. “I spoke with Barack Obama on a number of occasions when he was president and I wasn’t even chairman of the committee.”

Another top Democrat had a similar experience:

Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said his interactions with the White House in the past two years were primarily focused on the reauthorization of a vital section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes broad national security surveillance powers. Biden’s senior advisers and other top administration officials worked with Himes on the issue, and he praised the collaboration.

But Biden wasn’t part of the conversation. “I really had no personal contact with this president. I had more personal contact with Obama, which is sort of strange because I was a lot more junior,” said Himes, who took office in 2009. Congress extended the surveillance authority for two years instead of the administration’s goal of five years.

‘INFREQUENT’ AND ‘TIGHTLY SCRIPTED’ MEETINGS WITH CABINET MEMBERS

“Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said,” according to the Journal. “One top cabinet member met one-on-one with the president at most twice in the first year and rarely in small groups, another former senior cabinet aide said.”

Biden held just nine full Cabinet meetings during his first terms. His two immediate predecessors, Obama and Donald Trump, held 19 and 25, respectively.

“Former administration officials said it often didn’t seem like Biden had his finger on the pulse,” reported the Journal.

BIDEN STRUGGLED THROUGH PREP FOR ROBERT HUR INTERVIEW

Before Biden’s catastrophic performance in his debate with Trump, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report raised eyebrows over Biden’s ability to continue to serve as commander-in-chief.

Hur wrote that Biden was “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” who “did not remember when he was vice president” or “when his son Beau died,” prompting the president’s staff and allies to strenuously object.

But as it turns out his staff were well aware that he was struggling going into the interview:

In the fall of 2023, Biden faced a major test when Hur, the special counsel, wanted to interview him. The president wanted to do it, and his top aides felt that his willingness to sit down with investigators set up a favorable contrast with Trump, who stonewalled the probe into why classified documents appeared at Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the sessions.

The prep sessions took about three hours a day for about a week ahead of the interview, according to a person familiar with the preparation. During these sessions, Biden’s energy levels were up and down. He couldn’t recall lines that his team had previously discussed with him, the person said.

A White House official pushed back on the notion that Biden’s age showed in prep, saying that the concerns that arose during those sessions were related to Biden’s tendency to over-share.

The actual interview didn’t go well. Transcripts showed multiple blunders, including that Biden didn’t initially recall that in prep sessions he had been shown his own handwritten memo arguing against a surge of troops in Afghanistan.

REELECTION CAMPAIGN DONORS ‘SHOCKED’ BY HIS PERFOMANCE IN CALLS

Biden required campaign donors to send in pre-screened questions ahead of his calls with them, and then struggled to answer them despite having time to prepare, per the Journal.

One donor was “as shocked when a campaign official told him that attendees shouldn’t expect to have a free ranging question-and-answer session with the president.”

“At some events, the Biden campaign printed the pre-approved questions on notecards and then gave donors the cards to read the questions. Even with all these steps, Biden made flubs, which confounded the donors who knew that Biden had the questions ahead of time,” noted the Journal. “Some donors said they noticed how staff stepped in to mask other signs of decline. Throughout his presidency—and especially later in the term—Biden was assisted by a small group of aides who were laser focused on him in a far different way than when he was vice president, or how former presidents Bill Clinton or Obama were staffed during their presidencies, people who have witnessed their interactions said.”