CNN anchor Jake Tapper said on a Wednesday podcast that former President Joe Biden’s aides told him they found it difficult to determine whether his mental acuity was worsening due to his long history of appearing cognitively weak.
Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson published “Original Sin” on Tuesday, which reports that Biden’s inner circle covered up the former president’s decline. On “Making Sense with Sam Harris,” Tapper said Biden’s aides were uncertain about whether the former president was deteriorating because he frequently made errors — even when he was younger.
READ: Wisconsin GOP Senator Ron Johnson Launches Probe Into Biden’s Health
“I’ve known of him since the ’80s. And he’s always been gaffe-prone, long-winded, says inappropriate things — like that’s always been him,” Tapper said.
Host Sam Harris interrupted the CNN anchor to note that Biden also allegedly had a record of “smelling people’s hair.”
“That whole creepy little section was its own thing … some aides said to us that during this era, when the non-functioning Biden would rear its head — 2019, 2020 — and then he would show up more and more, non-functioning Biden — that they weren’t sure what was going on, because: (a) he was old, and that just happens with older people — they lose a beat,” Tapper said. “(b) He was always kind of prone to some of this behavior even when he was in fighting form. You know — long-winded, pointless stories, and forgetting names and such, gaffes, lies, all those things. So … that’s not exculpatory — but it is by way of understanding, like, the complication of trying to figure out, ‘Wait, what exactly is going on here with this guy?’”
The New York Times reported in September 2008 that Biden, who was then the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee, rarely spent a day campaigning without making an embarrassing gaffe, citing multiple examples around that time, including calling on a paraplegic state official to rise and be acknowledged.
READ: Florida Gators Honored In D.C. For Third NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship
Former President Barack Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod tweeted in 2019 that Biden had “a well-earned rep for goofy, harmless gaffes,” but that he risked harming his reputation with more serious errors after he inaccurately told NPR that he opposed the Iraq war since the very beginning.
Biden also has a history of making racially inappropriate remarks. For instance, he said in 2006 that Americans could not go into certain chain stores in Delaware “without at least a slight Indian accent.”
“In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian Americans, moving from India to America, you cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts without at least a slight Indian accent,” he said while preparing to launch his second presidential campaign.
During his 2008 campaign, Biden also praised Obama, who was then one of his primary opponents, as a “storybook,” because he was “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
Biden’s personal office announced Sunday that he had received a severe prostate cancer diagnosis on Friday. He previously underwent two operations to treat brain aneurysms and a pulmonary embolism in 1988, according to media reports from the time.
Please make a small donation to the Tampa Free Press to help sustain independent journalism. Your contribution enables us to continue delivering high-quality, local, and national news coverage.
Connect with us: Follow the Tampa Free Press on Facebook and Twitter for breaking news and updates.
Sign up: Subscribe to our free newsletter for a curated selection of top stories delivered straight to your inbox.
First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
