Biden’s Lapses Are Increasingly Common, According to Some of Those in the Room

People who have spent time with President Biden over the last few months or so said the lapses appear to have grown more frequent, more pronounced and, after Thursday’s debate, more worrisome.

In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.
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The recent moments of disorientation generated concern among advisers and allies alike. He seemed confused at points during a D-Day anniversary ceremony in France on June 6. The next day, he misstated the purpose of a new tranche of military aid to Ukraine when meeting with its president.

On June 10, he appeared to freeze up at an early celebration of the Juneteenth holiday. On June 18, his soft-spoken tone and brief struggle to summon the name of his homeland security secretary at an immigration event unnerved some of his allies at the event, who traded alarmed looks and later described themselves as “shaken up,” as one put it. Mr. Biden recovered, and named Alejandro N. Mayorkas.

He is certainly not that way all the time. In the days since the debate debacle, aides and others who encountered him, including foreign officials, described him as being in good shape — alert, coherent and capable, engaged in complicated and important discussions and managing volatile crises. They cited example after example in cases where critical national security issues were on the line.

Aides present in the Situation Room the night that Iran hurled a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel portrayed a president in commanding form, lecturing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone to avoid a retaliatory escalation that would have inflamed the Middle East. “Let me be crystal clear,” Mr. Biden said. “If you launch a big attack on Iran, you’re on your own.”

Mr. Netanyahu pushed back hard, citing the need to respond in kind to deter future attacks. “You do this,” Mr. Biden said forcefully, “and I’m out.” Ultimately, the aides noted, Mr. Netanyahu scaled back his response.

This account is based on interviews with current and former White House aides, political advisers, administration officials, foreign diplomats, domestic allies and financial donors who saw Mr. Biden in the last few weeks, sometimes just briefly, sometimes for more extended periods. …

…Kevin C. O’Connor, the White House physician, said as recently as February that despite minor ailments like sleep apnea and peripheral neuropathy in his feet, the president was “fit for duty.” He said tests had turned up “no findings which would be consistent with” Parkinson’s disease. The White House has declined to make Dr. O’Connor available for questions and did not respond to detailed health questions from The New York Times earlier this year.

When JFK ran and there were whispers of Addison’s Disease RFK, his campaign manager, put out “a cleverly worded statement,” that “Sen. Kennedy does not now nor has he ever had an ailment described classically as Addison’s disease, which is a tuberculose [sic] destruction of the adrenal gland”. JFK had Addison’s. Dr. O’Connor’s statement on President Biden and Parkinson’s is similarly “clever”: “consistent with.” Does Biden have Parkinson’s or doesn’t he?
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…by many accounts, as evidenced by video footage, observation and interviews, Mr. Biden is not the same today as he was even when he took office 3½ years ago. The White House regularly releases corrected transcripts of his remarks, in which he frequently mixes up places, people or dates. The administration did so in the days after the debate, when Mr. Biden mixed up the countries of France and Italy when talking about war veterans at an East Hampton fund-raiser.
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The picture that emerges from recent interviews about Mr. Biden is one of a president under stress — hardly unusual — as he tried to juggle nervous international partners, a recalcitrant ally whose continued war against Hamas was creating yet another threat to a second term and a family crisis with his own son, who was convicted of criminal charges that could send him to prison.

I predicted that the president would withdraw when Hunter was convicted, which I also predicted.
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…those 23 days before Mr. Biden met Mr. Trump on the television stage in Atlanta may be viewed by historians as the most critical three weeks in a consequential presidency, as the president faced an opponent he not only loathed, but viewed as an existential threat to American democracy. Were the wandering, inconclusive thoughts broadcast live to more than 50 million viewers just a bad night, a product of the exhausting month, or something larger? Had he not been crisscrossing the globe so frequently — including leaving Italy for a trip spanning nine time zones to a fund-raiser in Los Angeles — would it have made a difference?

I am struck by the Quasis focus on "those 23 days", "the most critical three weeks" of his presidency. Did something happen? The Times does shit like that. It makes hardly veiled allusions to something that it knows but that we do not.

Mr. Biden’s trips to Europe were marked by moments of sharpness in important meetings — including a complex session on diverting income from Russian assets to aid Ukraine — mixed with occasional blank-stared confusion, according to people who met with him. At some points, he seemed perfectly on top of his game, at others a little lost.

The Quasis know what they are doing here, and above with "He is certainly not that way all the time." They well know that deterioration, physical or mental, seldom happens all at once, it's a gradual stiffness is the joints, when physical, with age, not an abrupt running-a-marathon-and-then-not-able-to-walk-the-next-day; that perhaps especially with cognitive decline it's not being able to recite War and Peace from memory and then not remembering your own name the next day. There are these glimpses of deterioration, these signs, sometimes so subtle that unless they are repeated they are not noticed. That is to say that "moments of sharpness" and then "occasional blank-stared confusion" in the same meeting are diagnostic of mental decline.

If the president has Parkinson's Disease, if he has been diagnosed with any specific condition that explains these mixed states the public has a right to know. But, and I think that this is more important than a specific diagnosis unless that is for an irreversible, continuous, serious decline, then a characterization of the president as merely an "elderly man" is not helpful. In that case, what the president must do is be out frequently with voters giving speeches and holding rallies. He cannot present like he did Thursday night and then present as he did Friday in North Carolina and quell "panic." In fact, those "Two Joe Bidens" are "consistent with" "something larger".

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...much like during the State of the Union address earlier in the year, he often rises to big occasions and once he gets the rhythm of a speech, adrenaline appears to kick in.

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 After several days in France, Mr. Biden flew home briefly and dealt with the family crisis of his son’s conviction. He hosted an early concert marking the Juneteenth holiday where he was spotted standing stiffly during a musical performance. One person who sat close to the president said that he had a “dazed and confused” expression during much of the event. This person said Mr. Biden had shown a “sharp decline” since a meeting only weeks earlier.

Reinforces my supposition that it's Hunter.

After just a couple days at home, Mr. Biden turned around and flew back to Europe, this time to Italy for a summit of the Group of 7 leaders. Throughout the meetings, the pattern was the same, according to senior officials who attended.

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A senior European official who was present said that there had been a noticeable decline in Mr. Biden’s physical state since the previous fall and that the Europeans had been “shocked” by what they saw. The president at times appeared “out of it,” the official said, and it was difficult to engage him in conversation while he was walking.

 Ms. [Italian prime minister, Giorgia] Meloni and the other leaders were acutely sensitive to Mr. Biden’s physical condition, discussing it privately among themselves, and they tried to avoid embarrassing him by slowing their own pace while walking with the president. When they worried that he did not seem poised and cameras were around, they closed ranks around him physically to shield him while he collected himself, the official said.

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Asked if one could imagine putting Mr. Biden into the same room with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia today, a former U.S. official who had helped prepare for the trip went silent for a while, then said, “I just don’t know.” A former senior European official answered the same question by saying flatly, “No.”

 Some White House officials adamantly rejected the suggestion of a president not up to handling tough foreign counterparts and told the story of the night Iran attacked Israel in April. Mr. Biden and his top national security officials were in the Situation Room for hours, bracing for the attack, which came around midnight. Biden was updated in real time as the forces he ordered into the region began shooting down Iranian missiles and drones. He peppered leaders with questions throughout the response.

Note, this example given by WH officials occurred in APRIL, NOT during "those 23 days" in June.

After it was over, and almost all of the missiles and drones had been shot down, Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu to persuade him not to escalate. “Take the win,” Mr. Biden told the prime minister, without reading from a script or extensive notes, according to two people in the room. In the end, Mr. Netanyahu opted for a much smaller and proportionate response...

Mr. Biden left Italy to fly directly to Los Angeles for a star-studded fund-raiser with Hollywood celebrities and former President Barack Obama...

But Mr. Biden appeared tired during a 40-minute discussion onstage at the event, seated between Jimmy Kimmel and Mr. Obama. A few times, the president stumbled over his words, and when the other men were speaking, Mr. Biden often stared into space, his mouth slightly open, like he would later do at the debate.

Two days after finally returning to the White House, Mr. Biden invited members of Congress, former administration officials and leading immigration experts to the White House to celebrate action taken under Mr. Obama to spare young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, from deportation.

Two people with a clear view of Mr. Biden said his quiet, soft-spoken mumbling and occasional fumbling over the right words despite reading from a teleprompter left some in attendance concerned over his condition. He momentarily appeared unable to say the name of Mr. Mayorkas, his homeland security secretary, before recovering, leaving some in the audience jarred.

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...some attendees shared their concerns about Mr. Biden’s condition with each other. “People were not feeling great,” one person said. Another person hoped it was just a “one-off” bad moment before Mr. Biden’s forthcoming debate.  

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“He gave a strong speech, he didn’t stumble or mumble or look confused in any way,” said Judith Hope, the former chair of the New York State Democratic Party, who attended a fund-raiser in East Hampton on Saturday. “He was his old Uncle Joe self.”
 

“Are you aware of where he has been in the past seven days?” she said, raising her voice. “He continues to keep up a schedule that I could never dream of doing, that would totally defeat a younger person,” she added. “I think we need to examine our expectations.”