Damning Report Reveals Biden’s Memory Lapses Are Increasing

A new report by The New York Times paints a damning picture of Joe Biden’s mental and physical state in the weeks leading up to last week’s debate.

Times reporters who spoke with insiders close to the administration and the campaign revealed that Biden has appeared “confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations” over the past few months, even as he’s been “sharp and engaged most of the time.”

Republicans have ramped up attacks on Biden’s age and fitness with edited videos of Biden appearing to freeze, disoriented, at several public events, including a D-Day commemoration at Normandy, a Juneteenth celebration, and diplomatic meetings across Europe. The Biden campaign dismissed these videos as “cheap fakes.” But it’s now clear that Biden’s condition, punctuated by his poor debate performance, alarmed many before he took the stage.

According to the Times, Biden’s European trips were a mixed bag of “moments of sharpness … including a complex session on diverting income from Russian assets to aid Ukraine’’ and “occasional blank-stared confusion.” But European officials were reportedly “shocked” by a “noticeable decline in Mr. Biden’s physical state since the previous fall” and observed that he appeared “out of it.” European leaders at the G7 summit are reported to have held private conversations about Biden’s condition, and one former official is said to have expressed doubt about Biden’s ability to handle an adversary like Vladimir Putin.

But the most shocking revelation in the report concerns Biden’s debate preparation. According to the Times, prep meetings began no earlier than 11 a.m., and included time for a daily nap. Biden surrogates have blamed his performance on bad strategy, calling him “over-coached” and “over-practiced.”

As the campaign digs its heels in against those questioning the president’s fitness, any evidence that the debate was not an outlier but an alarmingly common occurrence will feed the increasingly strident calls for Biden to withdraw from the race.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a strange reaction to a phenomenally dark set of accusations that emerged Tuesday, seemingly lending credibility to a sexual assault allegation against him by a former employee, while attempting to shoo off the idea that he had chowed down on a dead dog in 2010.

During an interview on Breaking Points, host Saagar Enjeti asked the independent presidential candidate about a photograph of Kennedy posing with what appeared to be a barbecued dog.

“The article is a lot of garbage,” Kennedy said, referring to a Vanity Fair exposé, which published the image. The photo caption mentioned Kennedy recently texted the image to a friend with a message that he should try dog on a visit to Korea. “The picture that they said is of me eating a dog is actually me eating a goat in Patagonia on a white water trip many years ago.

“They say they have an expert that has identified that as a dog carcass. It’s just not true.”

Vanity Fair said a veterinarian examined the photograph and identified the carcass as a dog’s due to its 13 pairs of ribs, including a telltale pair of “floating ribs” that dogs have. Goats also have 13 pairs of ribs, with two pairs of floating ribs.

But that wasn’t the only strange allegation Enjeti pushed Kennedy on. The host also wanted answers to circulating rumors about the politician allegedly sexually assaulting a former family babysitter in 1998, when Kennedy was 45 and the babysitter was 23.

“In terms of the other allegations, listen, I have said this from the beginning: I am not a church boy. I am not running like that,” Kennedy continued. “I had a very, very rambunctious youth. I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote I could run for king of the world.

“So, Vanity Fair is recycling 30-year-old stories, and I’m not going to comment on the details of any of them,” Kennedy said, refusing an opportunity to elaborate further on the allegations.

The former babysitter, Eliza Cooney, accused Kennedy of rubbing her leg, reading her diary, asking her to rub lotion on his back, and trapping her in the pantry and groping her, all on separate occasions. Some of Kennedy’s friends also told Vanity Fair that he had sent them photographs of nude women multiple times. The friends believed Kennedy had taken the pictures himself but did not know if the women had consented to being photographed or of the images being shared.

Representative Jim Clyburn, whose 2020 primary endorsement paved the way for Joe Biden to lock up the Democratic nomination for president, says he would support Vice President Kamala Harris if Biden were to step aside in November’s election.

Clyburn, a 2024 Biden-Harris campaign co-chair, expressed his support for Harris on MSNBC Tuesday, defending her role in the White House and the Democratic Party.

“I will support her if he were to step aside,” Clyburn told Andrea Mitchell. “I want this ticket to continue to be Biden-Harris, and then we’ll see what happens after the next election.… No. This party should not, in any way, do anything to work around Ms. Harris. We should do everything we can to bolster her whether she’s in second place or at the top of the ticket.”

Is Clyburn alluding to the possibility of Biden being replaced? Whether he is or isn’t, the South Carolina Democrat stressed that Harris should not be bypassed or replaced with anyone else, which could determine what happens with Biden’s status on the Democratic ticket. Clyburn was very much the Democratic kingmaker in 2020, as his endorsement led to Biden winning South Carolina. His endorsement would be critical to any would-be Democratic replacement in the next few months.

Clyburn’s cryptic statement joins less vague rhetoric from other prominent Democrats who worry about whether Biden will have enough support to defeat Donald Trump. Notably, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed those fears on Tuesday, and Representative Lloyd Doggett, a 15-term congressman, even called for Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.

Meanwhile, Biden plans to speak with Democratic governors from across the country in a private phone call to try and allay their concerns, likely on Wednesday, which would be two days after governors discussed Biden in a phone call among themselves. Right now, the mood within the Democratic Party is tense and anxious, with even former President Barack Obama being unable to calm the party faithful.

The judge in Donald Trump’s hush-money case on Tuesday postponed his sentencing until September 18, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to grant sweeping immunity to the former president.

“The Court’s decision will be rendered off calendar on September 6, 2024, and the matter is adjourned to September 18, 2024 at 10:00 AM for the imposition of sentence, if such is still necessary, or other proceedings,” New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan wrote in a letter.

It seems that Merchan is no longer certain that Trump’s sentencing for his 34 felony count conviction will ever come to pass. The sentencing hearing was originally scheduled for July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention.

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers submitted a pre-motion letter requesting that the former president’s guilty verdict be set aside and his sentencing delayed, just hours after the ruling in Trump v. United States, which determined that Trump could not face legal action over his official conduct as president.

Although many of the actions entered into evidence in Trump’s hush-money trial took place before he won the White House, his legal team said that some of his communications with fixer Michael Cohen would have been thrown out or redacted under the new rule. Merchan had previously rejected a similar motion in April, calling it “untimely.”

Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments Cohen had made to keep adult film actress Stormy Daniels quiet about an affair she’d had with Trump ahead of the 2016 presidential elections. Trump’s legal team hoped Monday to brief Merchan on the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision on his guilty verdict.

The next day, prosecutors for the case wrote that they did not oppose delaying the sentence.

“Although we believe defendant’s arguments to be without merit, we do not oppose his request for leave to file and his putative request to adjourn sentencing pending determination of his motion,” prosecutors wrote in a letter to Merchan.

It’s still unclear whether the results of the immunity decision will result in Trump’s trial being thrown out. Now Trump’s lawyers will have more than two months to prove that Merchan was wrong to reject their first motion on the grounds that it was untimely, that the evidence on which Trump was convicted constituted official acts as president, and that the prosecutors were wrong to use that evidence to convict him.

This story has been updated.

Concern over Joe Biden’s ability to defeat Donald Trump in November amid questions about his age and mental fitness have already reached a fever pitch across the liberal media, with columnists and editors with the campaign’s ear exhorting the president to step aside. But now members of Biden’s own party, including those at the very top, are following suit in voicing their worry after Biden’s disastrous debate performance. The latest, and most notable so far, is Nancy Pelosi.

The former speaker of the House did not give a ringing endorsement of Biden when asked by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Tuesday. Though she lauded the Biden administration’s achievements during his term, she also echoed fears about Biden’s condition during the debate.

“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition?’” she said. “When people ask that question, it’s legitimate.”

Pelosi went on to suggest that both Biden and Trump should take mental fitness tests. “Both candidates owe whatever test you want to put them to, in terms of their mental acuity and their health—both of them,” she said.

The 84-year-old California representative is not the first elected Democrat to acknowledge the questions swirling around Biden’s candidacy, or even the loudest voice to do so—Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett called for Biden to withdraw from the race Tuesday—but she, along with South Carolina Representative James Clyburn, who was essential to Biden’s winning the Democratic nomination in 2020, is the highest-profile member of a growing chorus questioning Biden’s stamina in a race against Trump. Postdebate polls, including Democratic internal polling, show Biden behind Trump nationally, as well as in key swing states.

The Biden campaign responded to the initial swell of postdebate criticism by decrying the “bedwetting brigade.” But now, with Democratic governors holding a private phone call to express their worry, prominent party members like Pelosi and Clyburn publicly equivocating, and the urgency of messaging and energetic campaigning growing with each Supreme Court decision, it’s clear that Biden’s campaign can no longer afford to dismiss the issue.