Former President Joe Biden's decision to run for reelection splits longtime Democratic advisers and is a new book on Biden's cognitive decline, revealing alleged cover-ups of his administration.
Biden's former chief of staff, Ron Crane, has shut down former President Barack Obama's David Axelrod because he has repeatedly called Biden's age.
“The presidency is a tremendous tax job, and the harsh reality is that the president is closer to 90 than 80 at the end of his second term, which is going to be a big problem,” Axelrod told The New York Times.
Shortly after the Times story was published in June 2022, Crane was called Axelrod Humming, CNN anchor Jaktapper and Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson.
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Advisors to President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama opposed whether Biden should run for reelection in 2024. (Images of Reuters/Kevin Lamarck TPX images)
“Who's going to beat Trump? President Biden is the only one who's done it. Before the president says he should stand aside, you'd better have a lot of certainty about another candidate. The future of the country depends on it!” According to Thompson and Tupper, Crane told Axelrod over the phone.
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Crane believed that it was a “sloppy way of thinking” that anyone other than Biden could defeat Trump, the journalist said in the book.
But Axelrod, like most Americans, was concerned about the age of the first 10th president and the ability to serve for another four years.
Axelrod, the chief strategist of Obama's back-to-back victory campaign, was one of the last advisers to meet with Biden before Obama chose him as his running mate in 2008. Axelrod told Tapper and Thompson that he had no hope of Biden running for president, and ultimately Biden was disappointed to run for 2015.
They certainly didn't expect Biden to run for president at the age of 77.
President Barack Obama will leave Vice President Joe Biden to the President's Medal of Freedom at a ceremony at a state cafeteria in Washington on Thursday, January 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
After Axelrod made some friendly comments to reporters about Biden in 2018, Biden invited him to his rental home in Virginia.
“He was left feeling uneasy about Biden getting old,” Tupper and Thompson wrote.
Axelrod told Biden that age would be a matter of his campaign, but he encouraged him to lean on his experience and wisdom, the journalist said.
Axelrod's anxiety about Biden's age has grown. And when it came time for Biden to decide on reelection, he knew Biden shouldn't run in 2024. A longtime political advisor said someone from the White House “comes to their senses and wanted Biden and his family not to have it.”
Joe Biden will speak at the Inflation Reduction Act event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Tuesday, September 13, 2022. (Samuel Column/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Pointing to unfavourable battlefield votes starting in 2023, Axelrod encouraged Biden to drop out of the race in a string of social media posts. He said, “The stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore.”
“Only @joebiden can make this decision. If he continues running, he will become a Democratic candidate. What he needs to decide is whether it's wise, whether it's in his best interest?” Axelrod asked on social media.
Crane returned to see the public in August 2019, referring to Axelrod's comments following the 2019 Democratic presidential major debate, “there's still a man who was called Biden 'Mr. Magoo' in August 2019.”
Former White House Chief of Staff Ron Crane will speak on Wednesday, February 1, 2023 during a staff transition event held in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. (Andrew Haller/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
An excerpt from the book is as follows: “In response to Axelrod's 2023 post, Biden calls Axelrod “sting.” Private insult until someone leaks to Jonathan Martin of Politico.
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Fox News Digital has written extensively about Biden's cognitive decline and his inner circle's role in covering it up, dating back to the 2020 presidential election.
“There's nothing in the book that shows Joe Biden didn't do his job, as the authors claim, and he didn't prove their claim that there was a cover-up or conspiracy,” a Biden spokesman told Fox News Digital. “They show nowhere that our national security is threatened or that the President was not engaged in any important issues of the presidency. In fact, Joe Biden was an effective president who led our country with empathy and skill.”
