Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Maintains She Saw No Evidence Biden Was Withering Away

Democrat Georgia gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms claimed Friday that she saw no indication that former President Joe Biden was declining.

Bottoms, who worked as a White House adviser until 2023, claimed that she did not “experience” Biden’s decline that had been detailed in “Original Sin,” a newly released book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson. The book revealed that Biden did not recognize his longtime acquaintance, George Clooney, and that his aides contemplated putting him in a wheelchair due to his halting walk.

“Well I worked with President Biden as a senior adviser in the White House and I left in ’23. That was not my experience in the White House or my experience when I interacted with him on the campaign,” Bottoms told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “Listen, there was a tough election in ’24 and what we saw was the economy was on the table. And right now, people aren’t looking back to that election. They aren’t talking to me about whether or not I observed any decline with President Biden. Voters are talking about the economy in Georgia, they are talking about lack of access to healthcare in this state and they are asking me what will I do as governor to make a difference in their lives. So people are looking forward, not backwards.”

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Bottoms, who previously served as the mayor of Atlanta, refused to answer whether Biden hurt the Democrat Party by running for re-election. At the behest of many of his fellow Democrats, the former president dropped out of the race in July after his disastrous performance during the June 27, 2024, debate against the then-presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Prominent Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have dodged