The Journal. - Behind Closed Doors, Biden’s Age is Showing

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

For much of his career, Biden built a reputation as a master negotiator. He’s known for his detailed knowledge of issues—and for hitting his stride when the pressure was on. Now, 81-year-old Biden is the oldest person to hold the presidency. WSJ's Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes go behind closed doors where some who have worked with him describe a president who appears slower.  Further Reading: - Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping  Further Listening: - Inside the White House's Scramble to Avert a Bigger Middle East War  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Joe Biden is the oldest sitting president in U.S. history. He's 81 years old and turns 82 in November, just a few weeks after the election. And his age has come up a lot during his re-election campaign. President Biden's age is an enormous issue. That's our colleague Siobhan Hughes, who covers Congress. It shows up in polls as being a top issue. You can't really overstate the degree to which age overhangs the entire 2024 election. When I interview voters and say that I cover the White House,

the first question I get across the board is, what is he actually like and is his age affecting him? And that's our colleague Annie Linsky, who covers the White House. Together, Siobhan and Annie have been looking into what impact, if any, Biden's age is having on his ability to do his job as president. I mean, it's something that people are just constantly evaluating. White House officials and other Democrats acknowledge that Biden is getting older, but they say that behind closed doors, he's as strong and as dynamic as ever. They would say if only the American people could see the Joe Biden that we see every day, he is sharp as a tack, he is on top of it. He is sharp, intensely probing,

and detail-oriented and focused. He's asking detailed questions about policy. He's smart. He's on his game. He is a different person than the one that you see publicly. But, you know, we see the president publicly, he's been making slips and we see him on stage, we see him at speeches. But what is he like behind closed doors? You know, and is there a way to actually get it at that? And so that's where we wanted to know. I mean, OK, all right, well, let's talk to some people who do sit down and who do get that chance behind closed doors to meet with him. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Wednesday, June 5th. Coming up on the show, just how sharp is President Biden behind closed doors? All soccer fans, from Orlando to Los Angeles, take to the fields of the USA for your next vacation. Ready to kick off? Discover exciting games and events. Plus, find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food, and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much you'll want to extend your stay beyond the matches. Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway. Head to visittheusa.com. Annie and Siobhan started their reporting several months ago, after special counsel Robert Herr released a report that said Biden was a, quote, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.

Herr's investigation had to do with Biden's handling of classified documents after he was vice president. Herr didn't recommend any charges, but people latched onto the comments about Biden's memory. The headline you might think would be that he is not going to face charges, but it isn't. The headline is the detail of what the special prosecutor thinks of the sitting president's memory. They said that he appeared to be, you know, an older man who, you know, in some cases had memory lapses. We all could see that his mental cognition has been declining. You can see that in the very few interviews he does. You can see it in speeches. How did the White House respond to

Robert Herr's report that said he was old and had a poor memory? Biden himself reacted very angrily. The president, in a very unusual move, gathered reporters at the White House for a very quick and forceful and quite angry retort to the report saying, you know, I know what I'm doing. My memory is fine. I'm well-meaning, and I'm an elderly man, and I know what the hell I'm doing. I've been president, and I put this country back on its feet. I don't need his recommendation.

How bad is your memory, and can you continue as president? My memory is so bad, I let you speak. Amazingly, though, in that response, he was asked, you know, when he was with reporters, reporters will often bring up other topics. He was asked about the Middle East and he confused, you know, the president of Mexico with the leader of Egypt. So he had one of these flubs even as he was standing up to defend himself. As you know, initially, the president of Mexico, Osisi,

did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him. I convinced him to open the gate. Americans haven't had many chances to see Biden in unscripted moments. He's held fewer press conferences and given fewer interviews than his predecessors.

His last town hall meeting was in 2021. And according to White House visitor logs, he's held fewer small meetings with lawmakers as his presidency has gone on. In 2023, the most recent year for which we have full data available, President Biden simply hasn't been doing a whole lot of meetings with lawmakers. Siobhan and Annie counted only about a dozen small meetings with fewer than 20 lawmakers in 2023. That was about half the number from the year before and compared with between three and four dozen in 2021. So they decided to talk to some of the people who've actually been in these small meetings

with the president. Over the course of their reporting, they talked to more than 45 people, including Democrats, Republicans, and White House officials. I think a lot of people might hear this reporting and say, well, of course, Republicans are going to say that behind the scenes,

he's sleepy and not really there. And Democrats are going to say that, the scenes he's sleepy and not really there, and Democrats are going to say that, no, he's actually great. So we started with that assumption, too, that the critiques we were going to hear were going to that we confirmed some of this with Democrats, is the degree of specificity that those we spoke with brought to their descriptions. And so it wasn't merely Joe Biden is losing it. He's not forceful. It was specific descriptions of ways he had slipped in meetings. descriptions of ways he had slipped in meetings. And when some Democrats confirmed for us on the record that these incidents had in fact taken place, they just brought a different perspective to what had happened. They didn't say, well, Joe Biden didn't say that. They said things like, well, this is the way he's always been. He was just making a joke in that particular instance. He closes his eyes when he's thinking deeply.

And so a lot of the people we talked to weren't denying what had happened so much as trying to reframe it. Siobhan and Annie focused on a few meetings. One of them took place in May of last year when Biden and his staff were negotiating with Republican lawmakers about raising the debt ceiling. Negotiators who sat down with President Biden came away struck on a number of fronts.

He mumbled. He hewed heavily to notes in ways that interfered with the spontaneity of the exchange. Negotiators had trouble hearing him. When they did hear him, they noticed that he repeated anecdotes more than once. And at a time when the country was 10 days away from an expected default, the president seemed only loosely connected to the details of what it would take to close the debt ceiling negotiations. And so on a number of levels, negotiators came away concerned about an age-related decline. How does that compare to Biden's reputation historically as a negotiator?

It's a sharp contrast. Biden has a reputation for being a really gifted negotiator and very, very good in these situations because of his knowledge of people, his knowledge of policy, his warmth, his empathy. And so the contrast was striking. Some participants said Biden also seemed to show his age in another meeting in January of this, when he was leading negotiations on a major aid package for Ukraine. So this meeting was called because there was essentially a crisis. Ukraine was running out of munitions. The White House had warned this would be a disaster if aid didn't pass by the end of 2023. And we were now two weeks beyond that deadline. The meeting was called to bring together the chairman and ranking members of relevant committees in order to figure out how to quickly put a Ukraine aid package on the floor. When Biden started the meeting, he relied heavily on note cards. And his message was a little bit off to some people. The president over and over emphasized the importance of providing aid to Ukraine, which to that audience was a bit confusing because the meeting consisted of lawmakers

who already believed that aid needed to go to Ukraine. What they wanted to figure out was how to bridge their differences so that they could specifically get a Ukraine aid package on the floor. There were moments during the meeting where participants said Biden showed more energy, like when he interacted with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell or sparred with House Speaker Mike Johnson. But by and large, people noticed a president who was not really participating, who was more withdrawn.

Lawmakers were taking the center stage to speak. When a question did come to President Biden, lawmakers experienced him as deferring to his aides, essentially being overshadowed by whatever his aides had to say. And it was not the meeting they expected. The White House says that Biden was acting normally in both cases. For instance, in the meeting about the debt ceiling, the White House said other people in the room also read from notes. Here's Annie.

They say that the president was negotiating brilliantly in these meetings. They say that any sense that he was reading from cards, was overly reading from cards, is unfair, that in tight negotiations, of course, you have notes. They dispute that anybody had trouble hearing the president. They say that if he didn't seem, trouble hearing the president. They say that if he didn't seem, you know, plugged into the details, this was a negotiating tactic that he had to kind of be above the fray. And as for the Ukraine meeting? They say, look, nobody spoke up and said they couldn't hear the president. Nobody piped up to say, speak up, Mr. President. They say that he deferred to aides merely for technical details about the types

and kinds of weapons, for example, in Ukraine that were about to run out. So, you know, in their view, this was a very good meeting for the president. In both cases, in the debt ceiling negotiations and the Ukraine funding talks, the White House says Biden was successful. The debt ceiling was raised without major concessions, and Ukraine got its aid. Biden's doctors have also said the president is fit to serve, and that his recent annual physical showed no need for a cognitive test. We just talked about two meetings, but you've done reporting across a lot of the past year. So how would you describe what it is that you're reporting discovered? He has speeches and moments where he's really quick and he's forceful and he's clear and he's, you know, can be funny and quick-witted. And then there are other times where that is absent.

And in many ways, the behaviors that were described to us behind closed doors are pretty similar to what people see when he's in public. What this all means for Biden's campaign? That's next. When your celebration of life is prepaid in advance, it becomes a gift from you to your family later because no one should have to plan for a loss while they're experiencing one. Paying in advance protects your loved ones and gives you the peace of mind you deserve. Let us help you plan every detail with professionalism and compassion. We're your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at DignityMemorial.ca.

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Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Non-investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. What does this mean for Biden's campaign? How is it trying to deal with this issue? The campaign and the White House have, you know, they've tried different tactics. So one tactic that they've been deploying, you know, for quite a while now is to joke about it, like, ha ha. And to say, you know, the president will make little disarming remarks saying, you know, I was friends with the founding

fathers or, you know, you know, I'm 117 years old. Call me old. I call it being seasoned. You know, he'll joke about his age to sort of be disarming about it. So that's been one tactic. The other thing that he does, you know, that they will point to are kind of big tentpole moments, like the State of the Union, where even Republicans acknowledge that he was forceful and clear and crisp. So and they'll say, like, look, he's fine. You see him at the State of the Union. That's the Joe Biden that we see behind closed doors. That's the president of the United States.

This other stuff is all noise. So let's build the future together. Let's remember who we are. We are the United States of America. We are the United States of America. And there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity when we act together. When I'm on Capitol Hill, the thing I hear more than anything from Democrats is that the important thing is to look at Joe Biden's record and what he accomplished. The Inflation Reduction Act, insulin capped at $35 a month. Democrats also point to the passage of two major bills in 2021, the $1.9 trillion

American Rescue Plan, which stimulated the economy after the pandemic, and a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. And so the question seems to be, does it matter? If personnel is policy, as the Democrats say, and Biden is surrounded by a staff who even Republicans will say is really excellent, is it worth posing the question of what Biden is bringing to the table? And that's something that the country is going to have to answer. The White House says Biden's experience is highly valuable to the country, and they fought back hard against criticism about his age. White House officials followed Siobhan and Annie's reporting closely. And after the offices of several Democrats shared information with the White House about their conversations with them,

some of those lawmakers reached out to Annie and Siobhan a second time to re-emphasize Biden's strengths. A White House spokesman said, quote, we thought it was important that all perspectives be represented. To correct what he said were, quote, false and politically motivated claims. Is what people are seeing in Biden a normal part of the aging process? Did you talk to any medical experts about that? I think that's a really important question. And I think it does get at, I mean, we should be very clear here. The people that we were talking to are not doctors and they were not evaluating the president and they were not suggesting in any way that he has some kind of condition. The way I was thinking about it, as we were reporting, is a major part of the presidency is it's a performative job. It's the performance that you are giving when you get up and give a speech or when you do a debate or when you conduct a town hall or when you sit down across a negotiating table from an opponent.

it down across a negotiating table from an opponent, you know, there is a performative aspect to the job. And in these instances, when the president was meeting with people, the performance fell short in the view of many of the people who were there. Not all of them. Some of them thought, you know what, this is fine. I'm fine with this. And so I think that's the space that we're in. We were not sitting out to make any sort of medical evaluation of the president or his abilities. It's the impression that he's giving to the people, the decision makers, the leaders that he is sitting down with. Biden's opponent, though, Donald Trump, is also not that young. He's about to turn 78 years old. And there have also been instances where Trump's age

and his mental sharpness have been called into question. Absolutely. I think that's right. You see Trump making public flubs. I mean, I remember distinctly being in New Hampshire when he mixed up Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi in a long riff. He makes these public mistakes as well. And, you know, I think when you talk about acuity and the mental fitness for the job, one thing that many people point to on both sides of the aisle, quite frankly,

is the former President Trump's behavior after January 6th, when there was so much concern about his mental state and that members of his cabinet considered invoking the Constitution to remove him from office. I think a lot of people, though, have good days and bad days. I mean, there's like some days you wake up feeling energized and great and sharp, and other days, you know, you feel like you need more sleep or you're foggy and you don't really feel that, you know, maybe engaged or interested in the work that you're doing. So how much of this do you think can be just attributed

to good days and bad days that anybody has? And how much of it do you think can be attributed to the fact that Biden is 81 years old? It's true. Nobody wants to be judged on their worst moment, not even the president of the United States. But what was striking about these moments is these were Biden in his comfort area. He's a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, loves foreign policy. And so to have a lapse in a meeting over Ukraine seems striking. He has done negotiations on energy policy. And so to have a lapse in emitting over Ukraine seems striking.

He has done negotiations on energy policy. And so a different situation involving liquefied natural gas was striking. He was a key figure in the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations. And so to have a bad day on a very high stakes issue on a topic that he knows well did jump out. That's all for today, Wednesday, June 5th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. See you tomorrow.