President Joe Biden is reportedly struggling to function during closed-door meetings with U.S. officials and lawmakers to the point where at times people have wondered if he was awake.
The Wall Street Journal interviewed dozens of people — Republicans and Democrats, including those inside the White House — for its report and found that many had serious concerns about Biden’s mental fitness for the job. Their concerns match concerns that the overwhelming majority of voters have heading into the upcoming election following years of Biden making serious mental errors, from not remembering when he was in office to claiming that he had recently met with people who had been dead for decades.
The report comes after Special Counsel Robert Hur decided earlier that he could not bring criminal charges against Biden for his mishandling of classified material in part because prosecutors did not believe that he would be viewed as fit to stand trial.
The administration responded to the story by claiming that most of it was false or by trying to paint things Biden said or did as positive when most others perceived the president’s actions as the exact opposite. Other Democrats tried to defend Biden by saying that his mental decline was really just a “speech impediment” issue.
During a meeting earlier this year about providing funding to Ukraine, Biden reportedly “paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.”
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He spent a significant amount of time trying to convince lawmakers why it was necessary to provide the funding, even though the lawmakers who attended did so because they already believed that it was needed. During the meeting, Biden hardly spoke — often deferring to his staffers — and when he did speak, attendees could barely hear him, the report said.
“You couldn’t be there and not feel uncomfortable,” one attendee told the publication. “I’ll just say that.”
Sen. James E. Risch (R-ID) said that when dealing with Biden behind closed doors, “What you see on TV is what you get.”
“These people who keep talking about what a dynamo he is behind closed doors—they need to get him out from behind closed doors, because I didn’t see it,” he said.
When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) offered Biden a list of executive actions that he could take to fix the border crisis that he caused when he entered office and undid all of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, Biden reportedly snapped at Johnson and said: “I’ve forgotten more about immigration than you’ll ever know.”
During a meeting the following month in February, Johnson brought up to Biden that his new policy of halting Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports to other countries would be damaging to the U.S. economy and would strength Russian President Vladimir Putin’s funding for his war in Ukraine.
Biden reportedly responded by claiming that his new policy was “only a study,” according to the accounts of multiple people who were at the meeting. Biden apparently didn’t know what his own policy was.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said that when he dealt with Biden on negotiating to avoid a federal government shutdown, Biden “would ramble” and was not able to negotiate.
“I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy said. “He’s not the same person.”
McCarthy added that Biden would call to check up on the progress of negotiations, but never mentioned any details.
He said that during a call that he had with Biden while the president was on Air Force One, Biden was “was more with it than any other time,” but that during a subsequent follow up call, he completely fell apart and had tried to renegotiate items that were taken care of weeks prior in previous negotiations.
