Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a close confidant of former President Biden, said Sunday that he was never concerned about Biden’s ability to lead the country, even as the release of new audio and a forthcoming book have renewed questions about the former president’s cognitive abilities.
“The fact of the matter is, I saw Biden often,” Clyburn told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a “State of the Union” interview. “I talked to him on the telephone very often, and I never saw anything that I thought was outside of the ordinary.”
Tapper is one of the authors of the book “Original Sin,” which has offered new insight into Biden’s final stretch in office, but Clyburn pushed back on Tapper’s points that some Biden advisers expressed alarm or came forward with anecdotes about Biden’s memory lapses.
“I never saw anything I thought was unusual,” Clyburn said. “I never saw anything that allowed me to think that Joe Biden was not able to do the job.”
Axios on Friday published audio from a 2023 meeting between Biden and special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating the then-president’s handling of classified documents between Biden’s time as vice president and his presidential election. It showed Biden’s apparent difficulties in answering questions about documents and remembering important dates.
Clyburn acknowledged he was “concerned” by Biden’s stilted performance in his only debate against President Trump last year, which was a catalyst for Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race just months before Election Day, but he said he considered outside factors that Biden faced.
“A lot of us were a bit concerned about his schedule in the run-up to the debate,” he said. “And I called it at the time ‘preparation overload,’ because they were cramming at the end, into a four- or five-day period, preparation for the debate.”
“The question is, is this a condition, or is this an incident?” Clyburn added. “These kinds of concerns are out there, but none of us thought that there was anything here that created any suspicions of any prolonged condition.”
