Former Obama aide Jon Lovett admitted during a Thursday podcast that he held back concerns regarding former President Joe Biden’s decline because he wanted him to win reelection in 2024.
On “The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart,” Lovett appeared to recount two events he attended where Biden’s decline was on display — a White House reception during White House Correspondents Dinner weekend in April 2024 and a June 15 fundraising event that Academy Award-winning actor George Clooney wrote about in a July New York Times op-ed. Lovett told host Jon Stewart he was worried about hurting Biden’s prospects of reelection if he were to bring up concerns the president’s ailments.
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“I remember feeling I want to talk about this as a huge liability. I want to talk about this as something Joe Biden can overcome, but I’m not going to go so far as to say, ‘I think Joe Biden must drop out,” Lovett said. “He is too old to be president’ — (a) because I didn’t know exactly what was going on behind the scenes, but (b), if Joe Biden is the candidate, I want him to fucking win! Because I care about the country!”
“And I don’t want to be somebody suddenly having the words we’re saying taken out of context and all of a sudden part of the case against Joe Biden from the right that would use any person criticizing Joe Biden from the left as a weapon against him,” he continued. “So it was about being honest about Joe Biden’s age as a liability while knowing that if he is the nominee, I want to be clear that I thought it was important to make sure we did everything we could to reelect him.”
Lovett hosts a podcast called “Pod Save America” along with other former Obama aides, including Dan Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer said on a May 4 episode that he observed Biden’s decline at the April 2024 reception — but had no qualms about the then-president continuing to serve.
“I was at a White House reception and he was bad. He was quite bad in it. And he told the same story twice. He just seemed mostly old,” Pfeiffer said. “In no way did I look at that and say that man cannot do the job of president. I had real concerns that he could not do it for four more years.”
Lovett and Pfeiffer both asserted they allowed people to convince them that Biden’s behavior at the event was not due to decline.
Special counsel Robert Hur issued a February 2024 report finding that Biden willfully kept classified documents. However, Hur chose not to bring charges against Biden because a jury potentially would have perceived him as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” making it difficult to secure a conviction.
The transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden showed memory lapses, such as appearing not to recall when he began and ended his vice presidency and the date of his late son Beau’s passing.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson published a book titled “Original Sin” on Tuesday, which asserts that Biden’s inner circle concealed the former president’s decline, impeding the media’s ability to cover it.
However, NewsNation host Chris Cuomo argued on “CUOMO” Tuesday that the book itself is a cover-up — of the media’s political bias. Cuomo said the former president’s decline was apparent, and the media’s reluctance to report on it was not based on ignorance, but a desire for Biden to beat President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Biden’s personal office announced Sunday that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday.
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