Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) said in a Wednesday report that there is “no doubt” that former President Biden went through cognitive decline during his time in the White House.
“There’s no doubt about it,” Murphy told Politico when he was questioned about whether the mental fitness of the former president went downhill throughout his presidency.
“The debate is whether it was enough that it compromised his ability to act as chief executive,” he added.
Questions about Biden’s mental fitness were common throughout his time in office, but they came into prominence last summer following a debate between Biden and President Trump, during which Biden stumbled over his words and had a weak voice.
According to the Politico report, Murphy said that Biden not taking another stab at the White House in the first place would have benefited his party.
“I mean, isn’t that self-evident? We lost,” Murphy said, per Politico. “Obviously, in retrospect, we should have done something different. The likelihood is the odds were pretty stacked against us no matter what, but clearly people were looking for change and neither Biden nor Harris were going to be able to offer a real message of change.”
The Politico report comes as some of the questions about Biden’s mental fitness in office have returned to the spotlight, especially ahead of the release of a book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson titled, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”
Per an excerpt of the book, at a fundraiser soon before he left the 2024 race, the former president didn’t recognize actor George Clooney.
The Hill has reached out to former Vice President Harris’s office and a representative for Biden for comment.
