Former President Joe Biden's 2024 campaign team canned the use of pre-recorded campaign videos deemed "unusable," according to a new book about the now 82-year-old's cognitive decline, reports Axios.
In the book, "Original Sin," co-authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson report that the campaign packed a friendly audience into a high school gym in Biden's home state of Delaware last April for a town hall. Footage of it was planned to be used in a TV ad.
"The campaign was trying to make it look like the president was out there taking off-the-cuff questions from voters in public," the authors wrote. "But the event was closed to reporters, and the campaign had the full list of questions that people would ask."
Biden has so much "trouble," they said, that the campaign ultimately decided that the footage wasn't usable.
"Some said the problem was that the advance team had failed and the gym's lighting was terrible. Others admitted that there was a deeper, far less fixable problem: Biden."
His aides also refused to allow Biden to tape a five-minute video address.
"The man could not speak," said one person involved.
The book is based on interviews with more than 200 people.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.