Biden has acted like he did in ‘horror show’ debate up to 20 times, claims Watergate reporter

Joe Biden’s loss of control in his debate performance was not a one-off, sources have told one of America’s most respected investigative journalists.

Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate scandal, said insiders close to the US president believe he has shown increasing spells of “cognitive decline and physical infirmity”.

“That there have been 15, 20, occasions in the last year and a half when the president has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed,” Mr Bernstein, now a CNN analyst, said.

Mr Bernstein, the former Washington Post investigative reporter who helped bring down Richard Nixon, continued: “These people… say that in the last six months particularly there have been marked incidents of cognitive decline and physical infirmity.”

During his debate practice sessions at Camp David, Mr Biden never began before 11am and was given time off for a daily afternoon nap, according to the New York Times.

Preparations were apparently cut short by two days because the US President was recovering from two recent overseas trips to Europe.

One senior European official said attendees at the G7 summit in Italy last month were “shocked” by Mr Biden’s condition, and that he had noticeably declined since last year.

A former US official who helped organise the trip said they “don’t know” whether they would put the 81-year-old in a room with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

The June 27 debate, which saw a fumbling and halting performance from the 81-year-old president, raised concerns about his health and sparked criticism from some voters and donors.

It also led the New York Times editorial board to issue an op-ed saying that Mr Biden should step aside as the Democratic Party candidate in the November 5 election. “Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr Biden is not the man he was four years ago,” the New York Times wrote.

“[My sources] are adamant that what we saw the other night – the Joe Biden we saw – is not a one-off,” he said.

‘Repeatedly pushed back’

Mr Bernstein did not disclose to whom he had spoken, but said they were people who “have supported him, loved him, campaigned for him, see him often”.

He added that those who had approached Mr Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain – who has faced sharp criticism for the president’s debate performance – about these “inexplicable moments” have been “pushed back repeatedly”.

“People I’ve talked to have all been to Ron Klain to say ‘we have a problem, we have a problem’ such as we saw the other night,” he said.

Although no Democrat politicians have publicly called for Mr Biden’s campaign to be suspended, there is concern that his age could lose his party the presidency and the House of Representatives on Nov 5.

A post-debate CBS poll showed a 10-point jump in the percentage of Democrats who believe Biden should not be running for president, to 46 per cent from 36 per cent in February.

“Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr Biden is not the man he was four years ago,” wrote the New York Times editorial board on Friday, in an uncharacteristically critical piece about the president.

Mr Bernstein said that while there is “no question” about “how sharp Joe Biden is in his national security briefings”, staff are “dealing with two sets of one person” in the White House.

Some Democrats have blamed Mr Biden’s top team for refusing to discuss him stepping back before the party’s primary elections earlier this year.

“The fact is, there wasn’t an open dialogue about whether he should run except for the people who would benefit from him running,” one Democrat operative told Politico.

A party donor who is concerned about the president’s ailing health added: “We’ve all enabled the situation.”

Junior staff ‘scared’

Many of Mr Biden’s aides, including Mr Klain, have been political allies of the president for decades of his 52-year career in Washington politics.

But some more junior staff are scared of the president, and deliberately avoid briefing him on topics he will not like, Politico claimed.

“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” one senior administration official said.

“It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared s---less of him.”

The White House denied that aides edit briefings to avoid upsetting Mr Biden.

Media briefings

Mr Biden’s campaign has also blamed the media and the president’s political opponents for whipping up concerns about his age after Thursday’s debate.

Many of the Democrat voices criticising him are former aides of Barack Obama, who did not enjoy working with Mr Biden as vice president from 2009 to 2017.

“The bedwetting brigade is calling for Joe Biden to ‘drop out,’” wrote Rob Flaherty, the deputy campaign manager, in a memo to Democrats at the weekend.

“That is the best possible way for Donald Trump to win and us to lose. First of all: Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, period. End of story. Voters voted.”