Biden Looked ‘Heartbreaking Up Close’ During Post-Debate Interview, Book Claims

• Multiple new books are detailing the final months of Joe Biden’s presidency and his historic decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election.
• In a new book about Trump’s return to power titled Uncharted, author Chris Whipple quotes ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos as saying President Biden looked “heartbreaking” in his high-pressure post-debate interview.
• Another book claims White House advisers had plans in place for if Biden were to die in office.

Multiple books about President Joe Biden’s time in the White House are making new claims about his mental decline and eventual removal from the 2024 Democratic ticket following a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.

While a physician claimed in February 2023 that Biden was a “healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency,” concern about his health only continued to grow as he began seriously campaigning for reelection. 

The final straw for the Biden team was the campaign’s first-and-only debate on June 27, 2024. While by-the-numbers reporting from NBC News showed that Trump attacked Biden more and also went off-topic more often, Biden’s performance was by far the more startling of the two. He rambled and spoke incoherently, raising major concerns about his ability to serve four more years in office.

Following the debate, Biden sat down with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos in an attempt to spin his image, with his team asserting that the high-stakes interview would restore confidence in his fitness for four more years.

However, journalist Chris Whipple details in a new book, Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, how the interview became yet another warning sign that his candidacy was in danger.

“Stephanopoulos questioned the president gently, like a grandson,” Whipple writes of the ABC News sitdown. “Afterward, when I asked the ABC anchor by email for his impressions, he replied: ‘Heartbreaking up close.’ ”

Whipple previously told Politico that Biden’s “decline is a major part of the story” when it comes to his book.

“I happen to think that to call it a ‘cover-up’ is simplistic. I think it was stranger and way more troubling than that,” he shared. “Biden’s inner circle, his closest advisers, many of them were in a fog of delusion and denial. They believed what they wanted to believe.”

Less than a month after the debate, on July 21, Biden officially withdrew his candidacy for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the Democratic ticket in his stead.

In Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House — released earlier this month — authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes say the writing was on the wall for Biden’s demise long before debate night put a spotlight on his frailty.

In fact, the duo report that top aides to Vice President Harris “strategized around the possibility that Biden might die in office.”

Her White House communications director, Jamal Simmons, reportedly went so far as to secretly create a “death-pool roster” of federal judges who could be called upon to swear Harris into the top office if Biden died.

Simmons claims he never told Harris about the list, but left his plan with another of her aides when he stopped working for the VP.

In another excerpt from Fight published by The Guardian, Parnes and Allen allege that top Democrats began having “hush-hush talks” as early as 2023 to plot how to handle Biden’s risky reelection bid, preparing the party to be ready for every possible scenario in which Biden was unable to continue his campaign.

“One veteran operative summed up the sentiments of Democrats who worried they would get stuck with Harris but still wanted Biden out: ‘Well, at least she has a pulse,’ ” the book reads.

May 20 will see the release of perhaps the most damning title yet about the Biden presidency: Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.

The CNN reporters interviewed more than 200 people for their book and “found people post-election much more willing to talk candidly than they had been.”

July 8 sees the release of Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf’s 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America. The trio’s book includes an interview with Trump himself, and involved Biden and Harris in the fact-checking process.

“We spent more than a month fact-checking the manuscript, giving every person named the opportunity to respond for fairness and accuracy,” the authors said in a statement.

In an Oval Office speech about his decision to withdraw his 2024 candidacy, Biden did not directly reference concerns about his physical health or mental acuity.

He did, however, concede the fact that his years of political experience were not the boon they had once been in terms of his presidential duties.

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“In recent weeks, it’s become clear to me that I needed to unite my party in this critical endeavor. I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future all merited a second term, but nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy, and that includes personal ambition,” Biden said.

“So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation,” he conceded. “That’s the best way to unite our nation. I know there is a time and a place for long years of experience in public life, but there’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices, and that time and place is now.”