Former First Lady Jill Biden‘s press secretary, Michael LaRosa, says his colleagues in the Democrat White House ‘gaslit’ the public and their own media allies regarding then-President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and even his election polling. Speaking with Tara Palmeri at American University’s Sine Institute of Policy and Politics on a new book by Jake Tapper detailing Joe Biden’s decline, LaRosa acknowledged White House staff in the Biden family’s inner circle worked to hide the octogenarian Democrat’s physical and mental problems. However, he brushed off the ‘cover-up’ by arguing: “Every politician, everybody, every human being tries to cover up age.”
“We were always—from day one—cognizant that age was going, that age was an issue,” the former Jill Biden press secretary said, before revealing: “There are some things that are true, the gaslighting. There was a lot of denial of the polling. And I will use the term gaslight because that is what they were doing—the campaign, former colleagues.”
LaRosa claims he was most bothered by “the data denial” rather than the machinations of a handful of senior White House staff to hide Biden’s cognitive decline from the American people. The National Pulse reported last summer that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, and Ashley Williams—all staffers with close ties to Jill Biden—formed a protective bubble around Joe Biden, shielding him from even his own Cabinet Secretaries.
Palmeri goes on to press LaRosa if he was concerned about Biden, in his advanced age, running for re-election in 2024, to which the former Jill Biden press secretary bluntly responds, “Yes.”
“The President’s team was scared to death of impromptu, unscripted, unrehearsed, unpracticed, unchoreographed anything,” LaRosa states, arguing that while Joe Biden loved doing television and big public events, his staff was terrified his failing cognitive state would become readily apparent to the public.