A soon-to-be-released book on former President Joe Biden details uncomfortable truths about his decline during his last year in office, including his inability to recognize longtime friends.
In an excerpt, published in the New Yorker, authors Jake Tapper of CNN and Axios’ Alex Thompson write about one instance between Biden and actor George Clooney, friends of more than 15 years.
Clooney thought special counsel Robert Hur‘s February 2024 report on the president, where he called Biden an “elderly man with a poor memory,” was “mean spirited.”
And he championed the president after his State of the Union address a month later.
Clooney helped Biden win in 2020 and was happy to campaign for the president again in 2024. But his perspective changed at a fundraiser over the summer.
George Clooney says he felt ‘shaken to his core’ after seeing Biden
At a Hollywood fundraiser in June last year, Clooney said he witnessed a “severely diminished” Biden.
He took tiny steps and was guided by an aide.
“You know George,” the aide said to Biden, according to the book. “George Clooney‚” the aide clarified. “Oh, yeah!” Biden said. “Hi, George!”
The book describes Clooney as “shaken to his core.”
“Clooney had expressed concern about Biden’s health before. A White House aide had told him a few months before that they were working on getting the president to take longer steps when he walked — but obviously the problem went far beyond his gait. This was much graver.”
“Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again”
Other attendees said the president seemed “slow and almost catatonic.”
Authors Tapper and Thompson interviewed 200 people, most of them Democratic insiders, who had knowledge about the president’s final two years in office, for their forthcoming book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer reportedly had a ‘Plan B,’ if the presidential debate flopped
The excerpt describes another scene from the same night in June. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, while attending a wedding, reportedly expressed his concerns about the presidential debate between Biden and President Donald Trump on June 27.
According to the book, Schumer recalled saying that if Biden didn’t perform well, “it might change things.” Although another wedding guest recalled the Senate leader claiming former President Barack Obama, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., had “a Plan B.”
“Original Sin” leads the readers to the reason behind Schumer’s concerns.
Biden reportedly would call the Senate Democratic leader, often forgetting the reason for calling and talk “sluggishly.”
But Schumer didn’t share his doubts with other Democratic leaders to avoid a scandal, according to the book.
The presidential debate last year in June between Biden and Trump, moderated by Tapper and Dana Bash, exposed Biden’s decline on live television.
“What the world saw at Joe Biden’s one and only debate was not an anomaly,” Tapper and Thompson write in the book, as the Deseret News previously reported. “It was the natural result of an eighty-one-year-old man whose faculties had been diminishing for years.”
Clooney’s opinion piece faced some resistance
Clooney decided to tell the truth about what he saw through an opinion piece.
But Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul who was a part of Biden’s campaign, thought Clooney’s assessment wasn’t right and the idea of publishing an op-ed seemed “harsh and premature” to him, as the book states. Biden’s closest advisers, Steve Ricchetti, “threatened to shut Clooney down,” the book adds.
The actor‘s opinion piece, “I love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee,” ultimately published in The New York Times in July.
“As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced,” Clooney wrote.
But, the actor added, “the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can.”
Clooney stated: “We are not going to win in November with this president. … This is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor who I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.”
“Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” releases May 20.
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