According to CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, President Joe Biden’s inner circle deliberately limited Cabinet members’ access to him during 2023 and 2024.
Three unnamed Cabinet secretaries revealed that they were no longer briefing the president directly but instead relayed information through senior White House aides.
One secretary noted that during full Cabinet meetings, Biden appeared “disoriented” and “out of it.”
Another believed this was a “deliberate strategy” to keep the president at a distance, stating, “For months we didn’t have access to him. There was clearly a deliberate strategy by the White House to have him meet with as few people as necessary.”
From October 2023 onward, the Cabinet was largely sidelined, with exceptions made for then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin due to national security concerns.
Despite these internal concerns, a spokesperson for Biden defended his leadership, stating, “We continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job.
In fact, the evidence points to the opposite – he was a very effective president.”
The revelations have sparked criticism of both the Biden administration and the media.
Former NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd criticized Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for allegedly covering up Biden’s cognitive decline, stating that Schumer and other Democratic leaders were “as responsible as anybody else” for the deception.
Social media users have also accused Tapper of hypocrisy, pointing to his past dismissal of concerns about Biden’s mental fitness.
