Biden Insider: White House ‘Gaslit’ Americans About Former President’s Decline
A former Biden administration official has alleged that his coworkers intentionally “gaslit” both the public and journalists who voiced concerns about former President Biden’s age and cognitive state.
During a seminar on Wednesday, hosted by Puck journalist Tara Palmeri at American University’s Sine Institute of Policy and Politics, Michael LaRosa — who served for years as press secretary to former First Lady Jill Biden — spoke openly about the administration’s efforts to protect Biden from critical media coverage, according to Fox News.
Throughout the 2024 election cycle, many political commentators and media figures came to Biden’s defense as questions swirled over his mental sharpness. These defenses followed everything from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report, which characterized Biden as well-intentioned but forgetful, to viral clips of him seeming disoriented, and a Wall Street Journal piece outlining concerns about his conduct behind the scenes.
LaRosa stopped short of explicitly calling this a “cover-up,” but he did admit the administration knew from “day one” that Biden’s age would be a political liability.
He also revealed that within the administration, staffers repeatedly brushed off and downplayed internal polling data that showed Biden’s support stagnating ahead of the 2024 contest.
Although polls consistently showed that a majority of Americans believed Biden was too old for another term, much of the press dismissed those concerns as nothing more than a “right-wing conspiracy.”
Those concerns boiled over after Biden’s shaky performance in a pivotal June debate, fueling intense pressure for him to exit the race.
“There are some things that are true. I mean, like the gaslighting, there was a lot of denial of the polling. And I will use the term gaslight because that’s what they were doing — the campaign, former colleagues,” LaRosa told Palmeri.
“The message to everybody was to make sure that you tell people it’s too early. It’s too early. These polls don’t mean well; it became too early, and these polls don’t mean anything,” he added.
LaRosa went on to explain that the White House eagerly embraced positive poll numbers when Biden was ahead, only to dismiss polls as irrelevant when his lead evaporated.
He also criticized how the administration turned on traditionally friendly outlets, such as The New York Times, after they began to report more critically on Biden’s age and slipping poll numbers in mid-2024, Fox reported.
Subsequent reports from outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have since exposed that some of Biden’s closest advisers had expressed concerns about his health almost from the beginning of his presidency. Despite this, the White House consistently downplayed or ignored questions about Biden’s cognitive state, and frequently dismissed viral moments of apparent confusion as “cheap fakes.”
“I think if you were watching MSNBC, you probably believed [the White House] and were probably pretty shocked. But if you were, if you were consuming information, consuming data and looking at it objectively and trying to interpret it and process it objectively, then none of it was surprising,” LaRosa said.
The former official also claimed Biden’s staff was “scared to death” of letting him take part in off-the-cuff, unscripted press briefings. According to LaRosa, Biden simply “couldn’t compete for the attention economy.”
“They just couldn’t do it. They didn’t have any idea. And they didn’t have the vessel either in Biden, by the way, who would have done anything. He loves TV. He loves doing stuff. It was the orbit that did not trust their own candidate,” LaRosa explained.
Meanwhile, former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre recently reflected on what she described as the “shocking” moment when Democratic leaders began to turn against Biden, ultimately pushing him to leave the race.
At a Harvard University event hosted by the Institute of Politics, Jean-Pierre was asked to recount the challenges of navigating the three weeks between the debate and Biden’s withdrawal from the campaign, as well as whether Biden should have even sought reelection.
“I had never seen anything like it before. I had never seen a party do that in the way that they did, and it was hurtful and sad to see that happening,” Jean-Pierre said. “A firing squad around a person who I believe was a true patriot, a person who I believe did everything that he can for this country.”