Former US President Bill Clinton has said he believes Joe Biden was in “good shape” during his time in office, despite claims that the 82-year-old was struggling mentally and physically. Speaking to CBS Sunday Morning, Clinton said he was never worried about Biden’s ability to lead the country.
“I saw President Biden not very long ago, and I thought he was in good shape,” Clinton, 78, said. “I had never seen him and walked away thinking, he can’t do this anymore.” Clinton added that at no point did he feel Biden was unfit to do his job.
Clinton was responding to claims made in Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book Original Sin that Biden was so mentally ill by the end of his term that the White House was being run by a small group of aides and family members. According to the book, Biden struggled to maintain concentration, and his team made an effort to conceal his illness from the public.
However, Clinton dismissed these claims. “I didn’t want to [read the book] because he’s not president anymore, and I think he did a good job,” Clinton said. “I think we are facing challenges today with our president in our history. Some people are trying to use this as a way to blame him for the fact that Trump was re-elected.”
BIDEN WAS JUST A FIGUREHEAD?
The book, Original Sin, published in May, claims that Biden aides and even his family — including First Lady Jill Biden and his son Hunter — had to take over the main decisions. It pictured Biden as more of a figurehead than a leader in the final months of his presidency.
Clinton accepted that he had some concerns about Biden’s age during the re-election campaign. “The only concern I thought he had to deal with was, could anybody do that job until they were 86?” he said. “We’d had several long talks. He was always on top of his briefs.”
Biden eventually dropped out of the race in July after the presidential debate with Donald Trump.
Close allies of Biden have rejected the book’s claims. First Lady Jill Biden told The View, “The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us, and they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day.”
The book’s publication came at a time when Biden had been diagnosed with a “aggressive” type of prostate cancer.
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