Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson on President Joe Biden’s Decline, and Its Cover-Up
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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Nearly a year ago, last June, we sat down to watch the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It was the first and only debate, and it was moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN.
Biden's struggle to complete sentences, to remember facts. At times he made no sense at all. He spoke in a raspy whisper. Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person uh uh eligible for what I've been able to do with the uh with with the COVID, excuse me, with um dealing with everything we have to do with uh look If we finally beat Medicare.
Biden had been elected as the oldest person ever to hold the office, and prior to the debate, there were moments when his deterioration was certainly worrying, but the debate itself left him exposed, unmasked. There could no longer be any doubt at all, and no concealment. Joe Biden was an old man getting older, and Donald Trump was likely to win in a landslide. After the debate, Biden's people said in effect, nothing to look at here. The president had a cold, he had a bad day.
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