The 2024 presidential election was one of the wildest in American history, and one of the most unique parts of the story is former President Joe Biden’s attempt to run for a second term before dropping out of the race in late July 2024.
The myriad questions and speculation around Biden’s mental decline and eventual decision to exit the race late in the campaign, specifically around how his inner circle protected him, has not gone away.
Since Biden left the White House, the speculation has continued, and in the past two weeks, a pair of books about the 2024 election were released, giving a behind-the-scenes look at what actually happened with Biden.
Many are reacting to “Uncharted,” written by Chris Whipple, with the subtitle “How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History,” and “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” co-authored by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.
In an interview earlier this week with Fox News, Whipple called the campaign the wildest in history but said that it was “wilder and stranger behind closed doors than you can possibly imagine.”
As the books have given different information and insights into Biden’s mental state and how he was treated during his run for a second term, others who worked for him and were close to him shared their perspectives.
‘Uncharted’ author: The ‘delusion’ Biden’s inner circle was living in
Whipple is a documentary filmmaker, author and journalist, whose previous works include “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House” about the first two years of the Biden administration.
In an interview about “Uncharted” for NPR, Whipple shared that he believes Biden’s closest advisers and family members didn’t engage in a cover-up of his mental decline, rather they were in a “fog of delusion and denial,” truly believing he could serve another term.
“I differ with people who say that this was a cover-up in the classic Watergate sense of the word, and that suggests that you’re hiding something that you know to be true,” Whipple added.
“What’s so remarkable about this story is that Biden’s closest advisers really were all in on this delusional notion that he could — that Joe Biden could function effectively for another four years as president.”
Whipple later emphasized once again to NPR that those closest to Biden “weren’t covering up somebody that they thought was incapable of governing. They believed he was still on his game.”
Whipple said even before Biden announced his bid for reelection, he questioned whether the White House staff was hiding the president, sharing that while he was writing a book about the first two years of the administration, he asked for an interview with the Bidens.
“I was told I could email questions and I would get written answers in reply. You know, clearly, they were uncomfortable even then with the prospect of the president having an interview in real time with a reporter,” Whipple said, per NPR.
A look at Biden through the eyes of someone close to him
One of Whipple’s sources for “Uncharted,” was Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff who helped him with debate prep in 2024. Klain was the former president’s chief of staff from 2021 to 2023.
According to Politico, Whipple wrote in the book that during the first prep session for the debate, Klain was startled by Biden’s state.
He said Biden was exhausted and very out of it, seemingly unaware of what was happening in his campaign. Klain added that Biden seemed uninterested in plans for his second term and was obsessed with foreign policy.
“During one prep session in Aspen Lodge, the presidential cabin, Biden suddenly got up, walked out to the pool, collapsed on a lounge chair, and fell sound asleep. Yet his advisers were undaunted,” per Vanity Fair.
As written in Whipple’s book, Klain said he found that Biden “didn’t really understand what his argument was on inflation. … He didn’t really understand what his proposals had been. And he had nothing to say about a second term other than to finish the job,” per The New York Times.
In response to reactions to “Uncharted,” Klain wrote in a text to Politico “I think the framing is wrong, my point wasn’t that the president lacked mental acuity. … He was out of it because he had been (sidelined), not because he lacked capacity.”
He added to his defense of Biden by writing “He had been isolated from domestic politics by a WH team unplugged from Hill Dems,” allowing Biden to become “solely focused on foreign affairs.”
Klain did not specify who he held responsible for those failings, and keeping the former president out of the loop, per Politico.
What the authors of ‘Fight’ said about Biden’s mental state
Allen and Parnes, who cowrote ‘Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” had previously written books recounting the events of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
When speaking to Vanity Fair about the book, the two journalists/authors were asked who they thought was most responsible for hiding Biden’s steep decline out of senior advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti as well as former first lady Jill Biden.
“All of them. It’s pretty remarkable how they kept him very closed off. He was a shell of himself,” Parnes said.
She added that Biden as president was a completely different man than who she covered when he was vice president, “a guy who would hold court in the Naval Observatory with reporters until the wee hours.”
When asked about Biden’s inner circle protecting him despite his mental decline, Allen agreed with Whipple saying it wasn’t exactly a cover-up, but was more complex than that.
“What we saw was a lot of bad decision-making and, perhaps at the very top, people putting their own interests, and what they believed were Joe Biden’s interests, above the interests of the Democratic Party and the country,” he said, according to Vanity Fair.
Allen added that it was moral failure, but not necessarily a criminal one, “Which is what the term cover-up sort of implies, a criminal conspiracy, and we didn’t reach that threshold.”
Stephanopoulos calls his interview with Biden “heartbreaking”
In “Uncharted” Whipple quotes ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos who had a one-on-one interview with Biden in July.
Stephanopoulos described the former president as “heartbreaking up close,” when speaking about the interview held one week after the critical debate between (President Donald) Trump and Biden,” according to the Washington Examiner.
Whipple described Biden’s state during the interview as “hoarse and semi-coherent” during the interview adding that “Stephanopoulos questioned the president gently, like a grandson.”
Campaign staff feels ‘lied to’ about Biden’s condition
After details about Biden’s mental state before the June debate with Trump were released in the book “Uncharted,” former Biden campaign aide Ashley Allison said she felt “lied to” about the former president’s ability to run again.
Allison was asked by CNN host Abby Phillip “Do you feel lied to?” she responded that she did and that even though she worked for the former president she hadn’t been around him before the debate.
“If the people around him knew that he was not capable, it is unacceptable to me that they allowed him to go onto that stage. I deserve better as a voter, not even as a Democrat, as a voter and as an American, I do,” Allison added, according to CNN.
