The latest revelations from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s bombshell book about President Joe Biden aren’t just troubling—they paint a picture of a presidency effectively running on borrowed time, with a hollowed-out figurehead increasingly shielded from even his own Cabinet. And the damage isn’t just reputational. If these accounts are accurate, the United States was operating under a veil of deception during some of the most high-stakes years in recent memory.
That Biden’s inner circle debated whether to place him in a wheelchair before the 2024 election is a stunning admission. Not because it wasn’t believable—many Americans already suspected cognitive decline—but because it confirms the White House prioritized image over transparency. According to Tapper, they even resorted to practicing how Biden would walk to a podium, a chilling testament to how far appearances had to be manufactured to sustain political viability.
Think about what that says: aides weren’t preparing Biden for policy battles or global crises. They were rehearsing how he would walk.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Adviser, denies a claim that the former president once called him Steve.
This is honestly moot, but it gives an opportunity to highlight the role that Sullivan played in covering up Biden’s mental decline.
The Presidential Daily Briefing… pic.twitter.com/2PI2zas0m4
— Media Lies (@MediasLies) May 15, 2025
Perhaps even more disturbing is the reported isolation of Biden from his Cabinet. Tapper says that by 2023 and into 2024, three Cabinet secretaries confirmed that they no longer briefed the president directly. Instead, they communicated through senior aides—middlemen shielding the Commander-in-Chief from his own executive team.
One Cabinet member, speaking anonymously, described Biden as “disoriented” and “out of it.” Others went further, suggesting the president was only functional for “four to six good hours” a day, an alarming constraint for the most demanding job on earth. And when asked about emergency readiness—like a 2 a.m. national security call—aides reportedly doubted his ability to respond.
This isn’t about partisanship. It’s about fitness to lead. If true, the White House wasn’t functioning like an executive branch—it was operating like a caretaker government, with staffers and senior aides shielding a frail president from both responsibility and scrutiny.
Then there’s the anecdote—hard to ignore—about Biden allegedly forgetting the name of his own National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, twice calling him “Steve” during the tense 2022 negotiations over Brittney Griner’s release. Sullivan’s response when asked? Not a denial. He said, “I do not recall that ever happening.”
Biden’s former national security adviser Jake Sullivan tells our @Jack_Blanchard_ the former president’s debate performance was “a shock to me.” pic.twitter.com/8ZiY7v15vX
— POLITICO (@politico) May 15, 2025
That non-denial is deafening. He didn’t say it was false. He said he didn’t remember. The irony is hard to miss—denying cognitive slips by claiming you don’t recall them is either self-parody or quiet confirmation.
What Tapper and Thompson have laid out isn’t just gossip—it’s a case study in how a modern presidency can be stage-managed into illusion. If Biden’s Cabinet wasn’t seeing him for months, if meetings were filtered through aides, and if decision-making was a relay race handled by proxies, then who was actually running the country?
The United States faced real crises during this period: escalating tensions with China, a grinding war in Ukraine, and a deteriorating Middle East. Now we’re being told the man at the top may not have been mentally present for most of it.
And for those who dismissed early concerns about Biden’s health as conspiracy or exaggeration, these revelations are an indictment. The people who saw the warning signs weren’t fearmongers—they were ahead of the narrative.
