Biden was hidden even from members of the Cabinet in the last two years of his presidency: scandalous revelations from a new book

Some members of President Joe Biden's Cabinet did not feel he could be relied upon in an emergency during his final year in office. How the 46th president's inner circle gently sidelined him is revealed in a new book by a journalist CNN Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson.

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Several Biden administration cabinet members told the authors that the president's circle of closest confidantes had become so narrow in 2023 and 2024 that even members of his cabinet were excluded.

“Access was significantly reduced in 2024, and I didn’t interact with him as much,” one Cabinet member said, explaining that instead of reporting to Biden personally, he briefed other senior White House aides, who then passed the information on to the president.

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The cabinet member found the situation odd and wondered if it was a way to filter certain information and guide Biden's decisions.

"Yes, the president 'makes decisions,' but if his inner circle shapes them in this way, can it really be called a decision? Are they not leading him to something predetermined?" the senior official wondered.

A new book, Original Sin: The Decline of President Biden, His Cover-Up, and the Disastrous Choice to Run Again, is out May 20. It shows how Biden, his closest aides, and his family continued to push forward his doomed 2024 reelection campaign despite clear signs of the president’s physical and mental decline.

The book is based on more than 200 interviews, mostly with Democratic Party insiders, nearly all of which took place after the 2024 election.

Even before Biden's disastrous performance in the June 2024 debates led to his decision to drop out of the race three weeks later, Tapper and Thompson write that Biden had repeatedly shown signs of decline that were either ignored or explained away.

Tapper and Thompson report that Biden aides privately discussed whether a second term would require him to use a wheelchair, and that Biden failed to recognize movie star George Clooney at a June 2024 fundraiser.

In a statement to CNN, a Biden spokesman criticized the book: "We are still waiting for evidence to show where Joe Biden compromised national security or failed to do his job. Instead, the evidence shows the opposite — he was a very effective president."

The book's authors spoke with several Biden Cabinet department heads who explained how the president's aides in 2023 and 2024 isolated him from them as his health deteriorated.

Tapper and Thompson write that White House staffers who previously had regular access to Biden haven’t seen him in months. In some meetings, some noted that the president “occasionally mumbled to himself and didn’t seem to be paying much attention.”

"I don't think he has dementia," one of the people said. "But the thing is, he's an old man. The president can give you four to six productive hours a day. When he got tired, it wasn't that he became careless, but his attention was diminished."

A second cabinet minister said of Biden's inner circle: "It's hard for an adviser to be honest with a leader. If he asked me, I would say, 'Do one term and get out of politics to preserve your legacy.'"

A third person in Biden’s cabinet told Tapper and Thompson that Biden’s top aides had been “shielding him at every meeting.” Since October 2023, the person said, “the cabinet has been kept at arm’s length.”

"We didn't have access to him for months. There was clearly a conscious strategy in the White House to minimize his exposure to people," he said.

"In one of the rare meetings during that time," the authors write, the man "was shocked by the president's behavior. He seemed 'disoriented' and 'off-track,' his mouth hanging open."

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One department head said Biden's staff always tried to keep him in a good mood and shield him from bad news. This, the authors write, included situations when "bad news concerned the president himself, his deteriorating condition."

"The staff didn't handle him right," the cabinet member concluded. "If you were with him every day and knew it was a problem, why didn't you go to him and tell him?"

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