Former President Joe Biden

4 June
Trump launches investigation into whether Biden aides concealed alleged decline
The investigation will look into whether Biden’s aides “conspired to deceive the public” about Biden’s mental and physical state.
(Politico) President Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into whether aides to former President Joe Biden concealed alleged declines in his mental acuity, including by the use of an automatic pen to sign Biden’s name on official documents.
Trump said in a statement Wednesday that the investigation will look into whether Biden’s aides attempted to “deceive the public” by hiding “serious cognitive decline” from the American people.
Trump Orders Investigation of Biden and His Aides
The executive order is the latest effort by President Trump to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor and question the legality of his actions in office.
In an executive order, Mr. Trump put the power and resources of the federal government to work examining whether some of Mr. Biden’s presidential actions were legally invalid because his aides had enacted those policies without his knowledge.

1 June
Trump Amplifies Another Outlandish Conspiracy Theory: Biden Is a Robotic Clone
President Trump reposted another user’s false claim that the former president had been “executed” in 2020 and replaced by a robotic clone.
Mr. Trump reposted a fringe rant that another user had made on the president’s social media platform, Truth Social, just after 10 p.m. on Saturday. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the post about Mr. Biden, whom Mr. Trump has targeted for criticism almost daily since the start of his second term.

23 May
When Biden started showing signs of decline
(Washington Week PBS) Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, authors of “Original Sin,” speak with Jeffrey Goldberg about when Joe Biden started showing signs of decline and how some behind the scenes were questioning his fitness to serve as president.

20 May
Biden’s Age Wasn’t a Cover-Up. It Was Observable Fact.
The story about the former president getting old is getting old.
By Mark Leibovich
(The Atlantic) Washington is abuzz these days, The Atlantic has learned. … Because apparently, Joe Biden is still really old. Older than he was last summer, when Washington was even more abuzz about the 46th president being really old—and about whether he was fit to lead the country, run for reelection, beat Donald Trump, thwart fascism, etc.
Or three years ago, when overwhelming majorities of Americans were already saying in polls that Biden should definitely not seek reelection. Or two years ago, when he declared that he would in fact seek reelection, while Democrats anguished (off the record; you did not hear this from me) that if Biden went ahead with a campaign, it would surely end in disaster. Or six months ago, when it did, in fact, end in disaster.

All the President’s Enablers
Three books on Joe Biden’s presidency jointly paint a devastating portrait of an ailing, geriatric leader surrounded by mendacious aides and grasping family members.
Opinion by James Kirchick
(Politico) The former president’s deterioration and the effort to hide it from the public feature prominently in three recent tomes about the 2024 campaign: Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by the veteran campaign book-writing duo Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes; Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History by Chris Whipple; and, most sensationally, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, It’s Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The first two focus more squarely on Biden’s ill-fated reelection campaign, while the third, which publishes this week, zeroes in on the cover-up itself. While each book has its individual strengths, revelations and insights, reading them together paints a powerful picture of a presidency in dangerous denial. The impression that the president’s true condition was being kept under wraps was only heightened by the news last weekend that Biden has been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, an illness that usually takes years to progress.
… The individuals who collaborated in the cover-up of Joe Biden’s condition deserve to be shunned. While many contributed to the disaster that was the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination process, ultimate responsibility rests with Biden himself. Like Bill Clinton, who made his family, friends, and advisers lie for him over a personal matter, Joe Biden obliged his supporters to engage in deception on his behalf. While Clinton clearly understood what he was doing, however, we can’t say the same about Biden. Cocooned by mendacious aides and grasping family members, his cognitive functions degenerating rapidly, the perception of Biden as a vulnerable senior citizen manipulated by others is unnervingly realistic. But while Clinton’s duplicity concerned the minutiae of sex, Biden’s affected the fate of the world. The lie that he, his family, and his underlings foisted on the American public was severe as any Donald Trump has ever told.

19 May
Biden’s reputation has been besmirched – with parallels to Nixon’s post-White House isolation
David Shribman
(Globe & Mail) Repelled from office, blamed by party leaders for the return of Donald Trump to the White House, in virtual seclusion in Delaware and now diagnosed with prostate cancer, Joe Biden is in a position of isolation and recrimination no former president has experienced since Richard Nixon.
Now there are few if any Democrats urging restraint in the torrent of recrimination against Mr. Biden as fresh evidence of the former president’s infirmity emerge.
They come with the Tuesday publication of Original Sin, the chronicle of how the Biden White House hid the president’s mental and physical decline, and they stiffen Democrats’ resentment of Mr. Biden for refusing to stand aside from his 2024 re-election bid, for engaging in the dangerous gambit of debating Mr. Trump and for initially resisting demands for his withdrawal from the race.
Indeed, Mr. Biden’s reputation, built in a half-century of public life, including eight years as vice-president, has been besmirched, perhaps permanently, though the announcement that he has advanced prostate cancer may soften the criticism. Even Donald Trump sent good wishes, saying, “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family.”
The new book, by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and political correspondent Alex Thompson, carries the ominous word “cover-up” on the book jacket, a bracing reprise from the Nixon-era Watergate scandal that lacks subtlety: “President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” The book – its presales already rank atop several Amazon bestseller categories – shows how Biden aides took steps to limit his physical and mental vulnerabilities and to hide them from public view.