Index – Abroad – A more detailed report than ever on Joe Biden's health has come to light

Joe Biden has already had a number of public statements and missteps used against him by his political opponents (all of this is expected to be a common theme in the coming months, in the US election campaign already underway).

a The Wall Street Journal The article is new from the above point of view, as people with insight into the work of the US President told the newspaper what goes on in closed meetings.

The American newspaper asked a total of 45 officials in Congress and the White House about the mental state of the President of the United States.

Most officials — including some Democrats — said the president's cognitive decline had become clear to them in recent months.

Many people pointed out that Joe Biden speaks so quietly and weakly during closed-door meetings that many people do not even understand what he is saying. Others complained that the president was becoming less able to understand important policy details and was relying more and more on remarks, presentations and improvised answers from his aides during meetings.

The White House is trying to hide this

In addition, many people said that Joe Biden's behavior and condition change from day to day. The Wall Street Journal also reported this

In this regard, it was cited as an example that on several occasions when Democratic representatives were interviewed for this material, politicians shared the audio recording of the interviews or part of what was said with the White House – and later contacted journalists, asking them to focus more on the material “about Biden’s strengths.” .

You know, they just said I can call you back

– Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York, said during one of these requests, according to the newspaper.

Conversations that have been cited as examples of Biden's problems

“You couldn’t be there without feeling uncomfortable,” one source told the newspaper about a meeting with Biden. This happened even as Congress began crucial negotiations on aid funding for Ukraine in January.

The account of the event was confirmed to the newspaper by several participants. They said the president moved so slowly that it took about 10 minutes to greet nearly two dozen senior political leaders who had been summoned to attend the meeting before the meeting began.

After that, aid financing was discussed. Here, Joe Biden practically read his remarks and spoke generally about why they should give Ukraine the money. This was strange, according to the participants, because the American lawmakers who met with Biden knew about all of this before the meeting. (It was also noted that Biden's words were barely intelligible at this meeting as well.)

a The Wall Street JournalThe officials who spoke to him also said that the US President had on several occasions, in closed meetings, given answers to other people, to his close colleagues, when they asked him questions. And there were those who said that

The newspaper even cites Biden's blunders as an example. For example, when he said earlier this year that he had recently spoken with French President Mitterrand (he may not have mentioned Emmanuel Macron's name here; Mitterrand had been in office long before), or when he confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt.

They also added that a few days after the above-mentioned incident, Biden also held a meeting with Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives. According to a number of officials at this meeting

Johnson refused to comment on the incident to the newspaper, but several witnesses to the meeting did so. They said the meeting was about Ukraine, but Johnson also raised the administration's new energy policy move to freeze future licenses to export liquefied natural gas to a number of countries. That would affect shipments to Europe, among other things, effectively forcing US allies to import more fuel from wealthy competitors like Russia.

“Mr. President, you are helping Vladimir Putin,” Mike Johnson told the president at the meeting, according to a witness. Biden reportedly responded by claiming this was not true and wrongly saying they had not taken such a step but were only investigating whether it was possible. The newspaper wrote that Johnson was apparently shocked that the president had forgotten the details of his government's policy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, because of the above, Joe Biden's immediate colleagues are also concerned about the state of the president now that they are in the middle of the election campaign, and Biden (according to opinion polls) is slightly behind his rival Donald Trump.

The White House denies this, and they are talking about a political attack

After the newspaper article was published, a number of White House officials and Democratic politicians denied that Joe Biden was in a bad state. They often tried to frame the material about the US president's condition as a politically motivated attack, or claimed that the newspaper only quoted Republicans who said bad things about the president.

Regarding the attempt to emphasize Biden's strengths before publishing the material, White House spokesman Andrew Bates, who also said the material contained “false and politically motivated” claims, said:

We thought it was important to represent all viewpoints.

the Axios Bates later said of the article: “It's a little surprising that the Wall Street Journal thought it was breaking news that Republicans in Congress were telling them the same false claims they've been making on Fox News for years. But it's also interesting that the only people willing to discredit The bosses in this story are political opponents who are afraid their names will be used, as well as a man who has been caught lying before.

He pointed out that former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was the only one who accepted his statement by name and called him a liar. (Incidentally, McCarthy also said that he met with the president in person last year regarding debt ceiling negotiations, and that he has the impression that Biden is “not the same person” as he was, say, a vice president in the United States.) Obama administration.)

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