The dam is crumbling. On Saturday, we brought you the story about how some officials admitted anonymously that Joe Biden is “dependably engaged” during the hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.—before or after that, not so much. It’s called “sundowning,” and it’s not what you look for in a commander-in-chief.
Now a new report
Sunday describes more tactics used by the Biden inner circle to shield
the declining president from the scrutiny of the press or even the White
House staff.
The most damning of the allegations comes this time
not from secret sources but from former White House deputy director of
photography Chandler West, who posted a post-debate Instagram story that
was sharply critical of his former boss. Axios reporter Alex Thompson
writes that the outlet has obtained the screenshots:
West argued that it was time for the president to walk away:
"It's
time for Joe to go." That's what Chandler West, the White House's
deputy director of photography from January 2021 to May 2022, wrote in
an Instagram story after the debate.
"I know many of these people
and how the White House operates. They will say he has a 'cold' or just
experienced a 'bad night,' but for weeks and months, in private, they
have all said what we saw last night — Joe is not as strong as he was
just a couple of years ago," West wrote, according to screenshots
obtained by Axios.
Reached by phone, West said he wrote the post
because "the debate was not the first bad day, and it's not gonna be the
last." He declined to comment further.
It’s been a rough week for the president
Insider: Biden's Disaster Debate Was a Setup—a 'Soft Coup'
Devastating: Latest CBS Post-Debate Poll Numbers Paint Grim Picture for Biden
Report: Biden Family Decision About Campaign After Camp David Huddle, With Bonus Campaign Infighting
Meanwhile, West doesn’t look like a scary mega MAGA white supremacist fascist to me:
The report goes on to list how First Lady Jill and her closest advisers keep the president protected:
Biden's
behavior stunned many in the White House in part because Biden's
closest aides — often led by Jill Biden's top aide, Anthony Bernal, and
deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini — took steps early in his term to
essentially rope off the president.
Even the White House's
residence staff, which serves the first family in the mansion's living
quarters, has been kept at arm's length.
A former residence
official told Axios that Jill Biden was "so protective of the president,
and then Anthony just protects her, and they often wouldn't let us do
anything for them."
"The separation between the family and the
residence staff was so big, so divided," the former official said. "It's
not supposed to be and usually isn't, even in the Trump White House."
Related: Jill Biden's Ex-Husband Goes There: 'She's the One Who Wants to Be President Now'
In
one troubling incident, Biden appeared to feel overheated, although the
White House denies there was anything sinister about this episode:
On July 4, 2021, Biden hosted a party on the South Lawn in which he declared "independence" from the coronavirus pandemic.
It
was a hot day and after hours outside, Biden went back into the White
House through the Diplomatic Room, and then into the nearby Map Room.
Biden
sat down and the door was abruptly shut as Biden's aides blocked the
White House butlers and residence staff from aiding the president.
They
suggested to the staffers that the president was just a little
overheated. But the episode left residence staff feeling like his close
aides were creating a barrier around anything possibly related to the
president's health, the former official said.
The
thing about a dam is, once it breaks there's not a whole lot you can do
about it but get out of the way and wait for everything to come out.
What was once a White House wall of secrecy surrounding Joe Biden's
mental health is starting to crumble, and I expect many other
revelations to soon pour out.
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