Former President Joe Biden had long been the focus of age and mental acuity concerns before leaving the White House.
Now, thanks to Jill Biden’s ex-press secretary Michael LaRosa, those concerns have been validated and “were very real.”
LaRosa spoke at a seminar hosted by Puck journalist Tara Palmeri at the Science Institute at American University on Wednesday where he talked about the former president losing his train of thought as the Biden campaign gaslighted the public to believe Biden was OK when he really was not, per Mediaite.
LaRosa was asked about “Original Sin” — a book by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN anchor Jake Tapper. The book details how the White House attempted to cover up any concerns about Biden.
He said from “Day 1” his colleagues were aware of Biden’s issues and tried to conceal them from the public.
“Cover-up to me is a little hard, a little harsh. Every politician, everybody, every human being tries to cover up age. We were always, from day one, cognizant that age was an issue,” LaRosa said.
“There are some things that are true, I mean, like the gaslighting. There was a lot of denial of the polling. And I will use the term gaslighting because that’s what they were doing, the campaign, former colleagues. The message to everybody was to make sure that you tell people it’s too early. It’s too early. These polls don’t mean anything. Well, it became too early. And these polls don’t mean anything for about a year and a half. The polls, the numbers never moved.”
The administration was actually denying “insightful journalism” and “gaslighting of people,” he said.
“But by denying the data that was out there publicly, by denying the really insightful journalism, you know, they were actually demeaning to a lot of the people. But it was the data denial that really bothered me because we loved polling when we were running because we were always ahead,” he said.
“All of a sudden, because they’re always behind, the polls are meaningless. And they were attacking ‘The New York Times.’ They did do a lot of gaslighting of people. And I think if you were watching MSNBC, you probably believed them and were probably pretty shocked. But if you were consuming information, consuming data, and looking at it objectively, and trying to interpret it and process it objectively, then none of it was surprising,” LaRosa added.
He continued by admitting the campaign was “scared to death” of the media interviewing Biden or anything unscripted.
“The president’s team was scared to death of impromptu, unscripted, un-rehearsed, unpracticed, un-choreographed, anything, they couldn’t compete for the attention economy. They just couldn’t do it. They didn’t have any idea. And they didn’t have the vessel either in Biden, by the way, who would have done anything. He loves TV. He loves doing stuff. It was the orbit that did not trust their own candidate,” LaRosa said.
“Biden needed the press. When he needed them the most, they didn’t trust him, they gave him the back foot of the doubt and they put their foot on the gas and never took it off. And he was politically dead.”
