(AURN News) — According to a new best-seller, President Joe Biden’s closest advisers were aware of his cognitive decline long before he ended his reelection bid, but insiders say they continued to dismiss concerns—both internally and publicly. In “Fight,” journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes detail how staffers, elected officials, and donors were kept in the dark or actively misled about the president’s condition.
“We detail this in a great deal in the book,” Parnes told AURN News. “You see President Biden at fundraisers, at a small fundraiser with a very small amount of donors there, and he needs fluorescent tape on the ground to sort of lead him from place to place. That’s more common in rallies and bigger arenas—not so common in someone’s house.”
Parnes continued: “Eric Swalwell from California comes face to face with him at a congressional picnic at the White House in 2023—so a year before the debate—and Biden, who ran against him in 2020, doesn’t recognize him. And Swalwell needs to cue him as to who he is.”
The book also recounts numerous moments like this, including a makeup artist who was assigned to travel with Biden to maintain a consistent appearance for public events.
“But clearly the White House was well aware of this sort of optics problem they had,” Parnes said.
Allen described what he says was a broader pattern of misinformation. “I think it’s deeply harmed,” Allen said of Biden’s legacy. “I think the country broadly—and certainly many of the Democrats we spoke to—felt like the inner circle around Biden had gaslit them about his condition to start with. You go through the various things: it felt like they were gaslit about the economy, particularly inflation.”
Allen said even internal staffers were misled about campaign data. “We even talked to campaign officials who said that they felt like they were being gaslit by the very top of the campaign,” he said. “They were being told things that simply weren’t true throughout the process, including where the race stood.”
Harris herself, according to the book, believed she would win on election night.
“Ultimately, Kamala Harris believed—at the end, on Election Day—that she’s going to win because her team has been telling her that she’s going to win,” Allen said.
The book describes these moments as not only frustrating but dangerous for a campaign that needed honesty, not spin. “They just kept gaslighting everyone,” Allen concluded.
Click play to listen to the AURN News report from Jamie Jackson:
