After President Joe Biden’s recent dismal debate performance, concerns have emerged from both current and former aides about his health and leadership capabilities.
The White House attributed Mr. Biden’s low and sometimes difficult-to-understand speaking voice to a cold. However, some insiders suggest this reflects the president’s day-to-day condition.
Former White House deputy director of photography, Chandler West, shared on Instagram, “It’s time for Joe to go.”
“I know many of these people and how the White House operates,” Mr. West said. “They will say he has a ’cold’ or just experienced a ’bad night,’ but for weeks and months, in private, they have all said what we saw last night — Joe is not as strong as he was just a couple of years ago.”
Mr. West, who served at the White House from January 2021 to May 2022, told Axios. “The debate was not the first bad day, and it’s not gonna be the last.”
Despite the claims, Mr. Biden’s campaign downplayed the incident, referring to the debate performance as merely a “slow start.” Vice President Kamala Harris faced similar scrutiny in a post-debate interview with CNN host Anderson Cooper. When asked if Mr. Biden’s debate performance was indicative of his daily behavior, Ms. Harris responded by highlighting his ability to foster bipartisan cooperation, avoiding a direct answer.
“The Joe Biden that I work with every day is someone who, as I have said, has performed in a way that has been about bringing people into the Oval Office, Republicans and Democrats, to compromise in a way that is extraordinary these days, because it just doesn’t happen, but Joe Biden can make it happen,” Ms. Harris said.
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