Mark Halperin: New Details on Biden Decline Cover Up, Final Mamdani NYC Election Forecast, Plus: Ro Khanna 2028?

Mark Halperin: The question of the press’s role and the Biden White House’s role in the issues surrounding Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. I really don’t want this to be my beat, but the story is back. Because people still aren’t talking about it in the right way—and because it’s important for history, for America, for the Democratic Party, and for the integrity of my business—we need to review where we are and talk about it again.
What brought it back to the forefront was a new report from the House Oversight Committee investigating Biden, particularly focusing on his use of the autopen and whether it was legitimate. But underlying that is the broader question of Biden’s cognitive decline.
People call it a “cover-up.” It wasn’t a cover-up. It was an attempted cover-up. The Democrats and the media couldn’t cover up Biden’s decline any more than the Trump administration could cover up whether Marco Rubio has good hair. It was visible to everyone.
The Biden White House tried to stop the media and other Democrats from talking about it. It was an attempted cover-up that didn’t work. And for some reason, it took the debate with Donald Trump to make it undeniable.
Leading up to that debate, the White House used two methods to suppress discussion: threats and lies. If a reporter talked or wrote about Biden’s decline, they were threatened. “Don’t you dare do that.” Everyone knew it. Almost no reporter was willing to break the off-the-record agreements to admit the White House was threatening them.
The second method was lying—constantly insisting that Biden “runs us ragged,” that he’s “so much better and sharper than us,” that he’s “at the peak of his game.” Those lies were repeated to minimize coverage. Democrats outside the White House faced the same pressure through the same threats and lies.
A few exceptions stood out: Alex Thompson reported honestly in real time, and I did too. On the Democratic side, Congressman Dean Phillips tried to get someone to run against Biden, saying he wouldn’t win re-election because the country saw not just his age but his decline. Phillips was basically run out of the party for saying it.
The media stayed silent about the threats and accepted the lies. When Biden aides went on TV saying, “Biden’s awesome, he runs us ragged, he’s totally sharp,” the media either echoed it or dismissed questions as Republican hit jobs or “deep fakes.”
I’ve said before: this is the biggest media scandal in American history. Before the debate, the decline was obvious. The original sin wasn’t Biden’s decision to run again, as Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson wrote in their book. The original sin was the White House lying and intimidating, and the media accepting it.
After the debate, there was finally conversation. Now, with new testimony from the House committee, we’re seeing people who worked around Biden describing what happened. Even now, with people testifying under oath, the lying continues. Biden aides are still trying to rewrite history, still lying publicly and under oath.
Some Democrats dodge accountability by saying, “I didn’t see his decline privately.” That’s irrelevant. Everyone saw it publicly. The question isn’t what they saw in private—it’s why they didn’t act on what was obvious to the world.
The dominant media continues to pretend none of this happened, partly because they don’t want to admit their own complicity or acknowledge how easily they were intimidated. It’s embarrassing. We have all these outlets, yet barely any coverage of this.
Now, to some of the testimony. Two senior Biden aides—people who obviously observed the president’s decline—are now on book tours being pressed to explain what they saw.
First, Kamala Harris. In her book, she says they should have pressed the Bidens harder on whether he was up for the job, but she won’t admit she saw cognitive decline. She argues he was capable of being president but implies running for re-election was harder than the presidency itself.
In an interview with Australian TV, the reporter presses her hard, refusing to accept her evasions. Harris keeps dodging, saying Biden had “the capacity to be president,” though she admits she had concerns about his endurance for the 2024 race.
But again, framing this around the debate is revisionist history. The decline was obvious long before that. Biden had good days—he wasn’t as far gone as Republicans said, but he wasn’t as sharp as Democrats claimed. This isn’t about what Kamala saw in private. It’s about what the public saw on C-SPAN.
Next, Karine Jean-Pierre. In a New Yorker interview and her book tour, she keeps repeating that Biden was “sharp,” that he understood history and policy, that she had to be prepared for tough questions from him. Maybe she had some good interactions, but she also saw what the world saw before the debate.
Then there’s Ian Sams, one of Biden’s main spokesmen. He went on TV countless times insisting the president was fine. But in sworn testimony, he admitted he met with Biden “a handful of times”—maybe four or five—over two years. That’s it. Yet he told the nation, “This is the president we see every day.”
That’s misleading. He barely knew what Biden was like. He testified he’d only met him twice in person, once on Zoom, and once by phone. That’s an enormous story—one that’s getting almost no coverage.
Finally, Jeff Zients, Biden’s chief of staff after Ron Klain. Zients testified that he, along with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and VA Secretary Denis McDonough, all expressed concern after the debate that Biden shouldn’t run again.
Zients told lawmakers that within days of the debate, Biden knew he thought it was prudent to consider dropping out. Blinken and Sullivan—two of Biden’s closest aides—were concerned too. That’s a huge story.
In his testimony, Zients said he personally believed Biden should exit the race and that others shared that view. He also said many senators believed Biden couldn’t overcome the perception of his age after the debate.
So to summarize: Ian Sams told America Biden was fine despite barely seeing him. Jeff Zients and top officials like Blinken and Sullivan believed he shouldn’t run again. The media? Silent.
The White House chief of staff, national security adviser, secretary of state, and others all doubted Biden’s re-election ability, and by implication, his capacity to serve. Yet the media continues to look away.
This is one of the biggest stories of my career, and much of the press is compounding the original sin by pretending it will all go away. It won’t.