Senior White House advisers for more than a year have aggressively stage-managed President Biden's schedule, movements and personal interactions, as they sought to minimize signs of how age has taken a toll on the oldest president in U.S. history.
The White House has limited Biden's daily itinerary and shielded him from impromptu exchanges. Advisers have restricted news conferences and media appearances, twice declining Super Bowl halftime interviews--an easy way to reach millions of voters--and sought to make sure meetings with donors stuck to scripted pleasantries.
Senior aides dismissed travel suggestions over worries the president didn't have the stamina for them, including an idea for Biden to make weekly cross-country trips in 2022 to tout the benefits of his infrastructure law. ...
At a fundraiser in New York around the time of the United Nations General Assembly last fall, Biden seemed at a loss trying to answer questions about the Middle East from people in a photo line, according to a person there. An aide whispered in Biden's ear, the person said, and the president then answered.
At some fundraising events, the campaign allows few impromptu moments with the president, even with top donors. The campaign has long directed donors to submit their questions for the president in advance, including at an event this year in South Florida with only eight people attending, according to a donor. Biden spoke slowly and stumbled over some of his words, but he ultimately gave detailed responses, the donor said. The president seemed to have "lost a step," the donor said, but he didn't seem impaired.
Over the last year, an analysis of the corrections made to President Joe Biden's speeches and remarks shows a concerning trend: his rate of speaking errors has not only increased but nearly doubled.
In May 2024, White House staff had to correct Biden's speech errors a record 51 times. This rate was one of the worst noted during his presidency. Following these frequent slips, Biden notably reduced his public appearances, speaking half as much as usual until his widely discussed debate performance on June 27, which highlighted his struggles with coherence and accuracy on a global stage.
Starting from June 2023, where 33 errors were noted, the situation worsened by May 2024, with a significant jump to 7.2 errors per 10,000 words spoken. This spike occurred in a month where Biden spoke 70,000 words.
The errors cataloged are not minor slips but significant misstatements that distort factual information. For instance, Biden often confuses numbers by orders of magnitude--important numbers like the federal budget or tax cuts. His difficulty in distinguishing terms like the national debt from the deficit or confusing dates and names underscores a deeper issue of cognitive disarray.
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