President Joe Biden has thus far fended off the pressure campaign to remove him from the 2024 Democratic ticket. He has pledged delegates and support among base voters, with 66 percent wanting him to remain in the race. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to put out fires after his appalling debate with Donald Trump last Thursday night. Top donors are reportedly asking for refunds, unhappy with the operation’s Baghdad Bob undertones regarding claiming how Biden is the healthiest he’s ever been while ignoring and dismissing concerns about the president’s mental state.
The guardrails around the president were supposedly so extensive that our national media was powerless to report on anything relating to the president’s mental health substantially. We all know that’s a classic liberal media excuse—translation: we didn’t want to damage a Democratic president. During that meeting, it was revealed that Biden went to the doctor, which was not disclosed. Yet, what the president told the Governor of Hawaii should paralyze Democrats with fear (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:
President Biden told a gathering of Democratic governors that he needs to get more sleep and work fewer hours, including curtailing events after 8 p.m., according to two people who participated in the meeting and several others briefed on his comments.
The remarks on Wednesday were a stark acknowledgment of fatigue from the 81-year-old president during a meeting intended to reassure more than two dozen of his most important supporters that he is still in command of his job and capable of mounting a robust campaign against former President Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Biden’s comments about needing more rest came shortly after The New York Times reported that current and former officials have noticed that the president’s lapses over the past few months have become more frequent and more pronounced.
But Mr. Biden told the governors, some of whom were at the White House others who participated virtually, according to the White House, that he was staying in the race.
[…]
Initially, Mr. Biden’s campaign blamed a cold, putting out word about midway through the debate amid a series of social media posts questioning why Mr. Biden was struggling.
Mr. Biden said that he told his staff he needed to get more sleep, multiple people familiar with what took place in the meeting said. He repeatedly referenced pushing too hard and not listening to his team about his schedule, and said he needed to work fewer hours and avoid events after 8 p.m., according to one of the people familiar with what took place at the meeting.
After Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii, a physician, asked Mr. Biden questions about the status of his health, Mr. Biden replied that his health was fine. “It’s just my brain,” he added, according to three people familiar with what took place — a remark that some in the room took as a joke but at least one governor did not and was puzzled by.
So, we also have a new Biden campaign slogan, which RedSteeze noted on Twitter. Joe Biden: More sleep. Fewer hours. Of course, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign chair, said that Biden’s ‘my brain hurt’ remarks were a joke. The New York Times did include the portion about the covert doctor’s visit, albeit in the very last paragraph of the piece, along with noting that Karine Jean-Pierre was busted again for being terrible at her job:
A White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, confirmed that Mr. Biden had seen the White House physician to check on the cold. But on Friday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the opposite, telling reporters that Mr. Biden had not had any kind of medical checkup since February.
Biden is staying for now—I doubt this meeting increased confidence that he could do the job, especially with these nursing home recommendations pouring out.