They Knew — Key Dem Insiders Including Hillary Clinton in 2024: Biden Is Not ‘Politically Viable’
By 2023, as Biden announced his bid for reelection, those signs were flashing red. Yet … no one in his inner circle had the courage to step in and end the farce.
Ron Klain, who served as White House Chief of Staff during the first two years of the Biden administration, testified for more than five hours before staff members of the House Oversight Committee on Thursday. The committee, as we know, is trying to determine who was truly making key decisions as President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline raised serious questions about his capacity to govern.
Unlike Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, and former close advisers Annie Tomasini and Anthony Bernal — all of whom invoked their Fifth Amendment rights when questioned by the committee — Klain was said to have fully cooperated with lawmakers.
A source familiar with Klain’s testimony told Fox News that months before Biden dropped out of the race, both Hillary Clinton and then-National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan “approached Ron Klain stating they believed Joe Biden was not politically viable.”
The source did not specify when Clinton and Sullivan spoke to Klain or if they did so together or separately. [Note: Sullivan served as Clinton’s senior policy advisor during her 2016 campaign.]
Fox reported, “Klain told House investigators that Hillary Clinton approached him with concerns about the octogenarian leader’s political viability ‘by 2024.'” [So, it’s possible she spoke to Klain even earlier.]
According to the source, Sullivan told Klain that Biden “was less effective in 2024 compared to 2022.”
However, when Fox News reached out to Sullivan for comment, his representative, Adrienne Watson, denied that any such conversation took place. She responded with a brief statement: “Jake did not have a conversation with Ron about Joe Biden running for president before the debate.”
Later, she followed up with an amended statement: “We don’t think this is what Ron said. Your sources are wrong.”
Klain himself “believed Biden was mentally sharp enough to serve as president, and was not too old to run,” the source said. The former chief of staff also defended Biden’s “acuity to govern.”
“Mr. Klain stated that President Biden often confused names and proper nouns, and it got worse over time,” the source added. And he admitted that Biden had become “less energetic and more forgetful.”
Finally, Klain reportedly told lawmakers “there was no reason to doubt Trump’s own mental fitness.”
To his credit, Klain showed up for the deposition and actually answered questions. However, when compared to what he told author Chris Whipple during an interview about his experience preparing Biden for the June 2024 debate, it’s unclear just how forthright his testimony truly was.
Ahead of the April release of Whipple’s book, Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, The Washington Free Beacon’s Matthew Xiao wrote:
Klain, the White House chief of staff from 2021 to 2023, was “startled” by Biden’s declining mental and physical state when he went back to work for the octogenarian president in June 2024, according to excerpts from Chris Whipple’s upcoming book Uncharted published in the Guardian.
Klain had “never seen [Biden] so exhausted and out of it,” Whipple writes. “Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool.”
Klain had to cut short the two mock debates he had organized for Biden.
“The first was scheduled to last 90 minutes but Klain called it off after 45. The president’s voice was shot and so was his grasp of the subject,” Whipple writes. Less than 30 minutes into the second mock debate, Biden went off to bed, saying he was “just too tired to continue,” according to Whipple.
So, Klain thought Biden had the “acuity to govern,” yet he couldn’t make it through an afternoon of debate prep.
Let’s be honest: no one was fooled about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. The signs were obvious to anyone willing to see them back in 2019 when he launched his presidential campaign. By 2023, as he announced his bid for reelection, those signs were flashing red. Yet despite the whispers, the warnings, and the glaring evidence, no one in Biden’s inner circle had the courage to step in and end the farce. And even as her husband struggled daily through the demands of the presidency, Jill Biden was unwilling to relinquish the spotlight or to give up the power and the perks of her role as first lady and do the right thing.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
No viable as a candidate or not viable to continue in the Presidential position?
Soon, not viable period.
Both.
Unprecedented corruption meant we all paid a price!
Not only did Jill not want to lose the power and the perks, but by 2023 she would have known that the Biden post-presidency, if Joe was still around, was not going to be like the Obamas’. They weren’t going to be jetting around the world giving speeches to adoring crowds, hanging out with celebrities and taking luxurious vacations whenever they wanted, and raking in lots of money. That’s exactly what has happened: They’ve faded into relative obscurity. If he had died in office, she would have gotten attention as the grieving widow, but I’m guessing that would not have lasted long.
There was also need to stay in office to keep the whole extended Biden clan in the lifestyles to which they were accustomed. No Joe = no clout = no money.
Amanda Price
@AmandaP01997398
Replying to @mtaibbi
This says Russia had a dossier on Hillary Clinton. It says nothing about the Steele dossier.
Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
Dude that is Steele’s dossier.
One more thing: It was truly astounding how badly Biden’s camp and the Dems in general miscalculated the American people’s ability to ascertain his deterioration despite being told to believe otherwise. Not just because of social media showing things that the MSM studiously avoided or denied, but because these days most people from Gen Z on up have either had a family member or family friend with dementia/Alzheimers, or know someone who has. Too many people can spot the signs.
Unlike 2020, this time around they were damned if they tried to hide him and damned if they had him out in public. And frankly, I don’t think he would have made it to November if they had tried to get him out and about more than they already were scheduling.
Wel, they do force their own to drink their kool-aid. Very rarely are the effects reversible.
Come on, man!
I’ve met janitors smarter than Joe Biden. Of his own accord, he was never politically viable. He was a crooked pawn, the Senator from MBNA.
The only reason he was put on the ticket was that he could be easily manipulated. That he was beginning a long slide into dementia was irrelevant to TPTB until Joe couldn’t perform any longer. The problem was that Harris was actually dumber than Joe.
“Later, she followed up with an amended statement”
1. It didn’t happen.
2. It happened, but not as reported <— YOU ARE HERE
3. It happened as it was reported, and here's why that's good.
His cabinet was unwilling to give up the power of the autopen, that is all. Has nothing to do with courage.
He wasn’t politically viable in 2020.
That’s why they had to manufacture so many votes.
NOBODY actually believes that decrepit moron got 81 million votes at this point.
Why would Klain or any other Brandon handler want to step in and end it? Biden was the perfect for them. They could push for their leftist goals and Biden would suffer the fallout.
same reason they ran him in 2020
plausible deniability
they wanted stacy abrams but knew noooo wayyyyy would people buy in that she defeated djt
so they knew they had to have a white guy at the top of the ticket
2024 was no difference
the fact that harris got 70+ million votes ( lets just say all the votes were legit) PROVES to lefty as well as all of us
communism is already in the building and stinking up the place..and cant be debated away