What’s New
The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report Thursday suggesting the White House had to manage Biden’s energy and availability as early as 2021, this time citing conversations with former aides to the White House teams.
The aides and witnesses, many speaking to the paper anonymously, help paint a picture of a man who needed handling to get him through the typical burdens of the presidency. Biden reportedly relied on a “tightknit inner circle of advisers” that helped him execute his vision and limit gaffes, according to the Journal.
One aide recalled a conversation with a national security official, who said that Biden “has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow.” The aide claimed the conversation occurred in the spring of 2021, just months into the Biden administration.
Democrat Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Journal that he found the Biden White House to be “more insulated than most.”
“I spoke with Barack Obama on a number of occasions when he was president and I wasn’t even chairman of the committee,” Smith said.
Democrat Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told the paper that he 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,” Himes said.
However, a source familiar with the story and the requisite interviews told Newsweek that the WSJ interviewed more members of the Cabinet who refuted the premise of the article, saying instead that they speak with the president often and receive detailed instructions from him. The source alleged that those perspectives had been excluded from the published story.
A spokesperson for the Wall Street Journal told Newsweek that its reporters were put in touch with four Cabinet secretaries, of which they quoted Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
“Our reporters were also offered interviews with Sec. Pete Buttigieg and EPA Administrator Mike Regan, who both made similar points and weren’t directly quoted,” the spokesperson said. “As noted in the piece, our reporters interviewed nearly 50 people; you can’t expect all to be quoted — but the views and perspectives expressed were all reflected.”
Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
Why It Matters
The White House and Wall Street Journal have clashed over the past six months regarding Biden’s mental acuity and fitness for office, and this story is the next salvo.
A Journal article published June 4, 2024 – just weeks before Biden’s poor debate performance that started the push to convince him to exit the presidential election – laid out similar concerns. The paper said it interviewed “more than 45 people over several months,” involving both Republicans and Democrats “who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously.”
In that earlier article, Kevin McCarthy, who held the role as House Speaker in 2023, said in an interview that Biden in 2024 was “not the same person” as the vice president McCarthy had met with in years past.
What To Know
Since that debate, critics accused the White House of covering up Biden’s true cognitive ability, with many allies insisting Biden was sharp and at the top of his game even as the nation seemed rattled over the president’s performance on stage, which many called “disastrous.”
That followed a special counsel report published in January that highlighted Biden’s age and cognitive ability. The report, generated by Special Counsel Robert Hur, depicted Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Vice President Kamala Harris called the report “politically motivated” at the time, while dozens of Biden allies and surrogates vouched for his fitness and energy.
Much of the attention about this issue focused on how often Biden would meet with his Cabinet. According to former CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller, Biden has had nine full cabinet meetings: Three in 2021, two in 2022, three in 2023 and just one in 2024. This is less than half the number that Obama held in his first term, and about a third of how many Trump held in his first term.
Instead, Biden reportedly would meet with smaller teams regularly and discuss issues more directly. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin regularly attended Biden’s daily briefing on a rotational basis each week, followed by one-on-one meetings that grew less frequent in the second half of the administration.
The White House, through White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates, refuted many of the claims the Journal made, insisting that Biden would meet often with his Cabinet members and their teams.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack even went so far as to argue that the president should only step in to deal with the Cabinet when there were disputes between agencies. Vilsack said that he had “multiple avenues to explore or raise the issue.”
What People Are Saying
In a statement shared with Newsweek, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said, “President Biden has earned the most accomplished record of any modern commander-in-chief and rebuilt the middle class because of his attention to policy details that impact millions of lives, his active solicitation of diverse opinions … and because of his determination to fulfill a big-picture economic agenda.”
“President Biden speaks with members of his cabinet daily, and with most members multiple times a week, staying in close touch with them about implementation of key laws and strengthening our national security,” Bates said.
“During every presidency, there are inevitably some in Washington who do not receive as much time with whomever the president is as they would prefer; but that never means that the president isn’t engaging thoroughly with others, as this president does,” he added.
Update, 12/19/24 at 5:27 p.m. ET: This story was updated to include a comment from the Wall Street Journal.
