Former President Joe Biden's White House staffers considered giving him a cognitive test before gearing up for his second campaign, but they feared doing so would only draw attention to his age, a new book claims.
Despite being confident he would pass the test, they felt reporting on the test would just draw further attention to his age and feed conservative media and President Donald Trump narratives that Biden was unfit to serve a second term, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The report cited excerpts from "2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America," written by a trio of staffers from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. All three publications are frequently rebuked by Trump to be not only Democrat-leaning, but active in holding anti-Trump animus in their reporting on the campaign and his presidential terms.
The book is getting released July 8.
The book details Trump's urging for a cognitive test in February 2024 during the Democrat presidential primary in which Biden was able to flush out all the flimsy competition for the nomination, but just weeks before what would be his annual physical with Dr. Kevin O'Connor.
It was also the month that special counsel Robert Hur released his report from the investigation of Biden's holding and potentially mishandling of classified documents, where Hur concluded with a recommendation against prosecution of a sitting president because Biden was "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
After that report came out, Biden made a rare late-night media appearance to angrily declare "My memory is fine," the Times reported.
Trump has used his past cognitive tests in his campaign messaging and at his rallies to note Biden was refusing to follow suit, all while conservative media was widely rebuked by Democrats and leftist media for having reported on Biden's missteps and falls on stages and stairs and verbal gaffes at the mic.
The book notes Biden White House chief of staff Ron Klain was "angry" about former Obama administration official David Axelrod following the conservative media in noting Biden "looks his age," making his reelection campaign a dicey proposition for any American voters who just do not vote straight on their party line.
"The stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue," Axelrod said.
"There's no Obama out there, Axe," Klain told Axelrod, according to the book. "Who's going to do it if he doesn't do it?"
Ultimately, just days after Trump was nearly assassinated at a July 13 Butler, Pennsylvania, rally, Newsmax would exclusively report Biden was planning to end his presidential campaign and Vice President Kamala Harris would be hand-picked to replace him. Harris would lose all seven of the battleground states in a landslide election for Trump in November.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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