Former president Joe Biden's aides engaged in "a lot of gaslighting" to obscure the 82-year-old's cognitive decline from the American public, according to Michael LaRosa, who served as press secretary for former first lady Jill Biden.
"There are some things that are true, like the gaslighting. There was a lot of denial of the polling," LaRosa told Puck News senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri during a Wednesday panel at American University. Palmeri had asked whether a forthcoming book's allegations that aides hid Biden's mental deterioration are true.
"Were you concerned about [Biden] running for reelection in 2024?" Palmeri asked.
"Um, yes," LaRosa responded, saying that he had "just assumed" Biden wouldn't run for reelection. LaRosa, who had worked on Biden's 2020 campaign, left the White House in 2022 and did not work on the reelection campaign.
LaRosa's remarks add to growing scrutiny of the Biden campaign's efforts to mislead the public about the former president's mental fitness. This week, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson announced the forthcoming book, Original Sin, which is set to offer an "unflinching and explosive" account of Biden's reelection bid. Biden ran for reelection, the book says, "despite evidence of his serious decline," with Democrats going to "desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration."
Biden ultimately withdrew from the 2024 race following a disastrous debate performance. His replacement, Kamala Harris, went on to lose to President Donald Trump.
The former aide said that allegations of a full-scale "cover-up" of Biden's cognitive decline are "a little harsh" but admitted that Biden's team engaged in "a lot of gaslighting" to downplay concerns, even attacking New York Times polls that showed Biden behind.
Biden's staff also tried to keep him away from the press.
"The president's team was scared to death of impromptu, unscripted, unrehearsed, unpracticed, unchoreographed anything," LaRosa said.