This is the greatest book on the 2024 election so far.
In June 2023, one year before the debate and two months after he’d formally announced that he would seek reelection, Biden entered a reception at the Pool Lounge, an elegant glass – and – steel – lined event space inside the Mies van der Rohe – designed Seagram Building, on Park Avenue. Biden arrived by motorcade as service workers arranged a dessert bar with an assortment of donuts: chocolate blackout, blueberry, and key lime. It was his second pitch for cash that night, this time with heavy – hitting Wall Street donors, and the president appeared to be out of sorts when investment banker Blair Effron introduced him to a crowd of about fifty donors at 7:30 p.m.
While wealthy contributors listened to Biden brag about “Bidenomics” and warn that “there’s so much at stake,” the president’s muscles tightened. His speech slurred. His body locked up for a moment — just long enough to leave at least one audience member concerned that he might not make it to Election Day. Others wondered if he had the faculties to compete for the presidency. “It wasn’t just physical,” said one decades – long acquaintance of Biden who was at the reception and witnessed similar episodes from time to time during his presidency.
Hours earlier, Biden had curiously gotten up from his chair on the set of MSNBC’s Deadline: White House and wandered off behind host Nicolle Wallace before she could transition from their interview to a commercial break. A clip of the disoriented president instantly went viral on social media, racking up more than 2 million views.
Throughout his term, Biden fed into Republican claims that the White House lights were on but no one was home. He seldom held press conferences or participated in extended interviews. He relied heavily on printed talking points with extra – large lettering when meeting privately with lawmakers and members of his Cabinet. He often tripped over his words during public remarks. His aides wrote off these episodes as unreflective of the sharp mind they said they encountered at the White House every day. They regaled reporters with stories of Biden poring over thick briefing books and driving action in his administration — protecting the president with a counternarrative — that were dutifully reported in print and on the air…
Publicly, Democrats scoffed at Republican claims that Biden wasn’t up to the job. But privately, some of them worried all along that they were putting too much stock in an old man who, at best, had long since lost his fastball. During his 2020 campaign, aides tried to keep his calendar clear at night. That same year, the Covid pandemic restricted his contact with the outside world. Once he was elected, White House aides continued to limit his exposure — even to allies. Coronavirus protocols gave them a ready justification. But even when the rules eased, Biden remained closed off.
Ultimately, a core group of family and deeply loyal aides acted as gatekeepers, schedulers, and protectors of Biden. First Lady Jill Biden carried the most sway. Her chief of staff, Anthony Bernal, and White House deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini — who had been at the president’s side for years — helped manage his calendar and his personal needs. Successive White House chiefs of staff Ron Klain and Jeff Zients, along with presidential counselor Mike Donilon, senior adviser Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, and Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed, formed a cocoon around Biden that tightened and hardened with each passing month.
But his capabilities did not decline in a strictly linear fashion. There were good hours and bad hours, great days and lost days. Over time, he was foggy more often and sharp less often. The shift became more dramatic in the spring of 2024, according to an aide who saw Biden semiregularly. “Physically, mentally, there was definitely a drop,” the aide said. The change was harder for Democrats outside his tight circle to detect. They had to rely on reports from the aides who were protecting him.
In that way, the White House team permitted the Democratic Party to shield itself from the hard reality of Biden’s condition. Elected officials who believed he was losing altitude, either from personal interactions or from what they could glean by watching him on television, were reluctant to say so openly, fearful of being read out of their own party for heresy. They also protected Biden because they believed he was their best chance to stop Trump from taking the White House. But the signs of decline were clear to anyone who was willing to see them.
Behind the scenes, in brief interactions in the White House, lawmakers and aides outside of Biden’s inner circle would occasionally gossip about what they had seen. In one West Wing meeting in September 2021, as he tried to convince Democratic holdouts to help advance his agenda, Biden rambled far off topic, telling unrelated stories about his days in the Senate. Some wrote it off as a sentimental trip down memory lane, while others took the departure from talks about his sweeping economic proposal as evidence that he was losing his grip.
In late September 2022, Biden invited members of the late representative Jackie Walorski’s family to the White House. A couple of days earlier, he had searched a crowd for the Indiana congresswoman to credit her for cosponsoring legislation creating a conference on hunger. “Jackie, are you here?” Biden said. “Where’s Jackie?” She had died in a car crash the previous month. To help make up for the gaffe, he invited her ninety – year – old mother into the Oval Office and gave her and other family members a tour of the White House. Biden took a small group of Walorski family members, lawmakers, and the first lady to the White House dining room.
“Do you want to go outside?” he asked the Walorski family.
“No!” Jill Biden interjected from the other side of the table. “They don’t want to go outside.”
The president looked at Walorski’s mom as he opened a door to the South Lawn. “Are you sure you don’t want to go outside?” he asked. She did.
California representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, tagged along as Biden led his tour group down to the White House swimming pool and to the changing rooms.
What the fuck is going on? McCarthy thought. What could be so interesting about the lockers?
Biden tried the door. It was locked, and he needed a Secret Service agent to unlock it. Inside there was nothing more exciting than two dressing rooms. McCarthy, thinking he had just become a temporary staff minder for the president, prompted Biden to head back into the White House. The tour continued into a small office Biden had set up adjacent to the Oval Office with a desk, a chair, and a valet. A wrinkled blue shirt hung on the valet. He pointed out a painting that he particularly liked.
Holy shit , McCarthy thought . The president is not with it.
The lawmaker wandered back into the Oval Office, effectively leading the tour out of the tighter space with Biden’s smaller desk. The president perked back up as he walked into the Oval.
“Kevin, ask me why I have a painting of Abraham Lincoln,” Biden said, before answering his own question. “It’s because we’ve never been at a time like this since the Civil War.” McCarthy walked out to his car that night feeling a hint of sadness. This guy’s literally lost his mind , he thought to himself.
About a month before the New York fundraiser with Wall Street donors, Biden stumbled over a sandbag — literally — at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado. After that, he grudgingly made minor changes to his routine. He started wearing “maximum stability” HOKA shoes more often, and he began using a shorter flight of wheel – up steps to board Air Force One from under the plane’s belly rather than the longer set of airstairs commonly used by departing and arriving presidents. His brother Frank told friends that the nerves in Biden’s feet were often inflamed to the point that he felt a burning sensation as he walked, a neuropathy their father had endured and which explained the president’s ginger tread.
In front of more than a hundred people at an off – the – record conference in Aspen, Colorado, in September 2023, Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel confronted Klain about the president’s fitness. It’s grossly irresponsible for someone of Biden’s age, who is already clearly slowing down, to run for president again, Emanuel asserted during a question – and – answer session. Beyond his standing as a party donor, Emanuel’s brother Rahm was Biden’s ambassador to Japan. Klain, who by that time had left the White House, brushed the concern aside. Biden wasn’t going anywhere , he said.
At a February 2024 reception with governors, Biden refused to look at a GOP plan on border security — and then oddly clung to the folder containing it as aides tried to take it from him. For some, it was reminiscent of Biden’s performance at a meeting with governors the year before, in the East Room of the White House, when White House staff coached Harris to be ready to step in for Biden if his remarks went sideways. As he trailed off, Harris, sitting next to him, silently rooted for him to finish smoothly. “Her face looked like ‘C’mon, C’mon,’ ” said one Harris aide who was in the room. The same month as the 2024 governors reception, special counsel Robert Hur , tasked with recommending whether to prosecute Biden for retaining classified documents from his vice presidency when he was a private citizen, issued a damaging report to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Hur recommended that the Justice Department refrain from bringing charges against Biden because it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove that he knowingly kept the documents. “Biden’s memory was significantly limited,” Hur wrote, both when he spoke with a ghostwriter for his book Promise Me, Dad in 2017 and “in his interview with our office in 2023.” Biden is an “elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur concluded.
Biden struggled to recall which years he served as vice president, details of the debate over withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2021, and even the year in which his son Beau died of brain cancer. At a press conference following the release of the findings, Biden responded defiantly and self – righteously, as his aides often did when his acuity was questioned. “Frankly, when I was asked the question,” he said of the timing of his son’s death , “I thought to myself, was it any of their damn business?” But Hur, who theorized that Biden would be treated like a kindly old man by a jury, had inflicted damage on the president.
“The special counsel said the quiet part out loud,” a former lawmaker who had met with Biden at the White House earlier in his term said at the time. “I think I share some of the concerns of the American people. Because if it’s really Weekend at Bernie’s , who are the two guys carrying him along?” It was more than two guys who acted as crutches for Biden, but not much more.
In April or May of 2024, according to one aide who had recently returned to Biden’s orbit after a hiatus, there was a marked difference in his performance. “I was struck by how much better he showed up on TV than he did in person,” this aide said. Biden would frequently pause for minutes before exiting his limo and then emerge with a confused look on his face, the aide added. The stories weren’t legion, but they were common enough for insiders to sense that Biden wasn’t always in top form.
By the month of the debate, Biden’s condition had grown worse. On June 10, at a White House concert celebrating the upcoming Juneteenth holiday, he froze for several seconds, standing motionless amid a sea of attendees swaying to R&B music. Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, danced next to Biden as he stared off into the distance, his arms and hands tense at his sides. At the G – 7 meeting in Puglia, Italy, on June 13 and 14, Biden aides noticed that he was physically beat and mentally unfocused as he conversed with leaders of the world’s powerhouse economies. “He was tired when he got there, and tired in most of those sessions,” one of them said, describing various methods his team devised to keep him on track in the first half of 2024. “Everybody kind of woke up wondering if today was the day when something went sideways,” the aide said. “It was like this mix of anxiety and ‘let’s minimize all the risks we can.’ ”
While aides spent the early hours of each day worrying about what might go wrong, Biden’s mornings started with masking the physical signs of his age. When he traveled overnight, Biden would have a makeup artist meet him around 8 a.m. in a cleared – out hotel room on his floor to smooth out his wrinkles and cover the liver spots on his face. Usually, the room would be set up for Biden to participate in Zoom meetings with aides back at the White House, but he did not consistently do that. “He always made makeup, but the briefings were almost always pulled down,” said one aide familiar with his schedule. “He was a late starter for sure.” Vanity was nothing new for Biden, whose enhancements over time included hair plugs and veneers. But he and his aides knew that his age was a major issue for voters, and that meant his look mattered more than ever.
None of them said a word about trying to whitewash his age or hide his inability to concentrate on his meetings, but he had sown more doubt about his ability to perform his duties among some of the people who traveled with him.
The day after the summit, Biden appeared to lock up again at a tinsel – tinged Los Angeles fundraising extravaganza featuring former president Barack Obama and Hollywood A – listers. After the two presidents sat for a friendly interview with comedian Jimmy Kimmel, Biden stopped for more than a moment on his way off the stage. Obama walked over to him, took him by the wrist, and led him away. White House aides dismissed both freeze moments — at the Juneteenth concert and the $30 million Hollywood fundraiser — as fake news, arguing that Republicans were trying to turn normal pauses into a medical condition.
Silver screen idol George Clooney would later confide to the country in a New York Times op – ed that Father Time’s toll on Biden was evident that day. He was no longer the Biden of 2010, or even of 2020, Clooney wrote: “He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
* The forty – fourth president never had much faith in Biden’s political ability. He’d skipped over Biden to bless Hillary Clinton in 2016 and stayed out of the Democratic primary in 2020 until it became a clear choice between Biden and Bernie Sanders, a self – described socialist. He thought there were better candidates in the field that year. When Biden implied to voters that he would serve just one term — even calling himself a “bridge” to the next generation of leaders — Obama told friends he thought that made the most sense. If Biden was lucky enough to win a first term, he shouldn’t test fate again at eighty – one years old.
From his retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, where he played golf almost daily with billionaires, entertainment icons, and sports stars, Obama liked to think of himself as floating above the fray.
* [Jennifer] O’Malley Dillon did not like to be questioned — not by her staff, not by other operatives, and certainly not by donors. At forty – seven, she was one of only a handful of living campaign managers who had guided a Democrat to the presidency, and she had done it with plenty of skeptics challenging her moves. By kissing up to Biden and his graying pooh – bahs on that campaign, and later at the White House, she amassed more power over the president’s political operation than anyone outside his innermost circle. By setting up information silos that reported only to her, she maintained her authority over the 2024 campaign.
Over the years, JOD had earned a reputation as a polarizing force, inspiring deep loyalty among the staffers she empowered and alienating those she shunned. If she wasn’t a master of the inside political game, it was only because she left too many adversaries in her midst. But she was not someone to be fucked with lightly. Under attack from the campaign’s top donors, she refused to give an inch. She simply repeated the talking points of the night before, applying another layer of lipstick to the face of failure. A round of rapid – fire questions did nothing to dent her armor as she insisted that Biden’s team did not think there was a larger problem with Biden than an unexpectedly bad debate night. “If we really were trying to hide him, we would have hidden him,” she told them. “I never imagined he would have such a bad debate.”
What do we say to people who think there’s something wrong with the president? What’s the plan to mitigate the damage from the debate? What changes need to be made to bounce back and win the election? O’Malley Dillon told the buckrakers to stop wringing their hands. You’re either on the team, she told them, or you’re not.
Not only did some of Biden’s most important allies believe that O’Malley Dillon was gaslighting them, but they felt that she was treating them like traitors. Incompetent , one bundler thought as he listened to frustration mounting in the voices of his peers. An honest assessment would go a long way to reassuring us. O’Malley Dillon had become accustomed to watching elected officials, donors, and aides fall in line when she gave orders. Now, O’Malley Dillon taking a tough stand against the very people who paid her salary rated somewhere between chutzpah and hubris.
* To Obama, Biden didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of the situation. He hung up more convinced that Biden was out of touch with the harsh reality of certain defeat.
Biden lived in bubble wrap inside bunkers. The White House. Camp David. A primary home in Wilmington that his family called the Lake. And, increasingly, a beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Withdrawn from the maddening crowd of professional Democrats, fat – cat donors, and prying reporters, he honed the chip on his shoulder. He was always right; they were always wrong. They always doubted him. They would never learn, no matter how many times they underestimated him. They were all Obama. They would pretend they had been with him all along when, inevitably, he rebounded to victory.
Like most politicians, Biden demanded absolute loyalty from the people he allowed into his physical and psychological circles. In turn, his family and closest aides reflected his us – versus – them paradigm. They too treated anyone who questioned him with suspicion and anyone who crossed him with spite. This was especially true within the tight – knit Biden family, which surrounded him at Camp David the weekend after the debate. The family trained their fire at the insiders, not the outsiders.
The campaign’s spin galled Biden’s family and some of his close friends. The idea that a cold had defeated him sounded ridiculous on its face. More than that, it put the blame at the president’s feet and absolved his aides. Beyond Hunter’s vendetta against Dunn and Bauer, the family developed a narrative that, rather than illness, Biden had been undone by overpreparation . In this telling, which would be spread to the media, his team had filled his head with so many facts, figures, and scripted lines that he couldn’t process everything in real time.
Even if it wasn’t true, that narrative provided an opening for his aides to fall on their swords, sparing the president. That was the right thing to do, at least from the perspective of Biden’s family and friends. But his White House and campaign aides stuck to the story that nothing was amiss at debate prep, that there was no way to predict how poorly he would perform, and that the cold was the only explanation they could find. “None of those cocksuckers would take the blame,” said one Biden ally who participated in debate prep.
* Biden even factored in the party unity aspect: if Democrats picked someone else, they could lose Black voters by the millions. But the most satisfying aspect of his decision to endorse had little to do with Harris. “It was a fuck – you to Obama’s plan,” said one person close to both men. “At that moment, you have very few things you control, and that’s the one thing he had control over, and he chose to stick it to Obama.”
In truth, there was little love lost between the Biden and Harris camps. First Lady Jill Biden had never gotten over Harris hammering her husband over school busing on a debate stage in 2019 — all but calling him racist — and neither had Biden’s old guard. The first lady’s staff “holds the grudges that she can’t outwardly hold,” said one White House official. Over the previous three weeks, Biden’s team had inflicted serious reputational damage on Harris with Democratic insiders — to say nothing of the three – plus years before that.
She had hurt herself too. Harris was tough on staff, even by Washington standards, and they spun in and out of her orbit at an alarming rate. She tended to interrogate them about matters large and small, asking questions until she eventually found one they could not answer. It made her feel intellectually superior — a sign of an underlying lack of confidence in herself — said one longtime aide who had worked with other politicians. “She can be ice cold,” this person said.
* She often spoke publicly of her affection for him, and there were few signs that the principals did not get along well. But now that he had thrown in the towel, she knew locking down delegates would be harder because of the way his team disparaged her to fellow Democrats.
That had been a sore point for years, long before the debate. Like most vice presidents, she was given a shit – sandwich portfolio stocked with issues, like illegal border crossings, that the president couldn’t solve. By July 2021, less than six months into her job, Harris slipped under the even mark in favorability surveys, eventually dropping well below 40 percent approval, and stayed underwater.
In 2022 and 2023, some elite Democrats chattered about the pros and cons of replacing Harris on the ballot. The talk was never serious, but it underscored the degree to which Democratic insiders worried that she would be a drag on Biden — with Republicans arguing that the next person in line to the presidency mattered more with an elderly commander in chief. Some Democrats thought she was incapable of winning if she had to take over for him.
* The main plank of the case for her, even among many of those who made it, revolved around the idea that the party would implode if it bypassed a Black woman vice president. Pelosi, the Democrat who put the most public pressure on Biden, didn’t want her. “Her assessment was there were other, better candidates who didn’t have Harris’s negatives, but that anyone would be better for House and Senate races than Biden,” said one Pelosi confidant. In private conversations, Obama flat – out told allies she would lose to Trump.
“I think they felt Kamala was weaker than she is,” said one Republican Trump ally who knows Biden, Obama, Harris, and Pelosi.
Had Biden been most concerned and clear – eyed about keeping Trump out of the White House, he might have chosen not to seek reelection at all. His approval ratings had dipped underwater for good following the fatal withdrawal from Afghanistan. He failed to sell his legislative wins as economic engines. About three – quarters of voters thought the country was on the wrong track. And most of them believed he was too old to serve another term.
* Obama still had deep misgivings about Harris — and a hankering for an intraparty fight. “He did not think she should be the candidate,” said one confidant. He liked the idea of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer at the top of the ticket and Maryland governor Wes Moore at the bottom — a combination that would still allow Democrats to rally around a woman and a person of color — but he was mostly certain he didn’t want a coronation of Harris.
* Harris had long pined for Obama’s imprimatur. But for the most part, he couldn’t be bothered with her.
In Chicago’s Grant Park, on the night he claimed the presidency in 2008, Harris wandered outside a VIP tent set up for elected officials. She tried to force herself into one reserved for Obama’s friends and family. “She was adamant about it,” said one person who recalled her eagerness to get inside “the bubble.” But Harris, then the San Francisco district attorney, was turned away because she was neither family nor friend.
* Harris had tea with the Obamas a couple of times during her vice presidency. But Harris did not solicit their counsel in the way that other savvy politicians did. “She didn’t ask them questions. She didn’t build up a strong relationship there.” That resulted from her own self – doubt, the aide said. Harris “didn’t want to be seen as not knowing something” or “to be exposed.”
