Biden ‘forgets his own policies in meetings with senior politicians’
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Joe Biden has forgotten details of his own policies in closed-door meetings with senior politicians, according to reports.
The US president is said to use notes for talking points and rely on advisers to answer questions in backroom negotiations, the Wall Street Journal reported. Some claim the 81-year-old frequently mumbles and is “not the same person” he was a decade ago.
The White House pushed back hard on the claims, dismissing them as a “political tactic” by Republicans ahead of the presidential election in November.
Most of those who claimed Mr Biden was showing signs of his age were Republicans, but some Democrats conceded that he appeared slower than he was as vice-president.
In a one-on-one talk in February with Mike Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Biden apparently referred to a big policy change by his administration as a study, according to five people familiar with their discussion.
Mr Johnson is said to have criticised him for halting permits for shipping liquefied natural gas (LNG) to several countries, including European nations.
“Mr President, you are helping Vladimir Putin,” Mr Johnson told him, according to one of the people briefed on their exchange.
Mr Biden apparently retorted that this was not true and that the policy was only a study. The House speaker is said to have been dismayed that Mr Biden did not seem aware of what his administration was doing.
‘False account’
Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said the individuals who were repeating Mr Johnson’s side of the story were repeating “a false account”.
The study Mr Biden referred to is part of the new policy, which does not affect current LNG exports, he told the newspaper.
In a meeting with congressional leaders in January to discuss funding Ukraine’s war effort, Mr Biden is said to have used notes to make obvious points, while pausing and closing his eyes for extended periods.
He spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the discussion.
Mr Biden frequently deferred to other lawmakers at the meeting and largely stayed out of the conversation, turning to staffers when he was asked a direct question, according to the newspaper.
“You couldn’t be there and not feel uncomfortable,” one person who attended the meeting claimed. “I’ll just say that.”
However, Casey Redmon, a National Security Council official also present at the talk, said Mr Biden turned to aides only twice.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, said Mr Biden had been “incredibly strong, forceful and decisive” at the meeting. Other officials put forward by the White House said people did not have trouble hearing what he said.
In talks about raising the government’s debt ceiling in May last year, Kevin McCarthy, then House speaker, and two others familiar with the discussion said there were points when Mr Biden mumbled and relied on notes.
“I used to meet with him when he was vice-president. I’d go to his house,” Mr McCarthy, who has since left Congress, said. “He’s not the same person.”
At the time, Mr McCarthy said he enjoyed his meeting with the president and praised his team as “very professional, very smart, very tough at the same time”.
‘Political tactic’
“Congressional Republicans, foreign leaders and non-partisan national security experts have made clear in their own words that President Biden is a savvy and effective leader who has a deep record of legislative accomplishment,” Mr Bates said.
“Now, in 2024, House Republicans are making false claims as a political tactic that flatly contradicts previous statements made by themselves and their colleagues.”
Questions have been raised about Mr Biden’s mental acuity for years. Earlier this year, he repeatedly confused European leaders with long-dead counterparts, referring to Angela Merkel as Helmut Kohl and Emmanuel Macron as Francois Mitterrand.
In February, a controversial report by Robert Hur, a special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department, characterised Mr Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.
Mr Hur claimed that the 81-year-old could not remember when his son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer in one damaging section that drew a furious response from the president.
A transcript of their conversation later released showed that Mr Biden recalled that his son died on May 30, but did not immediately recall the year.
