ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos described former President Joe Biden as “heartbreaking up close” after conducting a one-on-one interview with him in July, the latest revelation on how clear Biden’s apparent mental decline was to those close to him.
Stephanopoulos’s July interview with the president was held just over a week after Biden’s debate with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, with many critical of Biden’s performance onstage. Following Biden’s debate performance, the White House sought to “staunch the bleeding” of some Democrats calling for Biden to step aside from the 2024 race. This prompted the White House team to accept the interview with Stephanopoulos, according to the new book Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.
The book’s author, Chris Whipple, described Biden’s appearance as “hoarse and semi-coherent” during the interview, in which Stephanopoulos asked his questions “gently, like a grandson.”
“Afterward, when I asked the ABC anchor by email for his impressions, he replied: ‘Heartbreaking up close,’” Whipple wrote.
Whipple’s statement mirrors a story that spread after the Biden interview when a passerby asked Stephanopoulos if he believed the president should step down. The anchor appeared to respond, “I don’t think he can serve four more years.” The Washington Examiner’s Sarah Bedford contended that most people agree that Biden was not fit to serve another term and that such an assessment is “pretty apparent.”
Last week, the Washington Examiner’s Byron York assessed how Whipple’s book portrayed the former president as very exhausted ahead of the CNN debate, with Biden’s top aide Ron Klain “startled” by the president’s weariness. York noted how Klain continued to push for Biden to remain in the race against Trump despite Biden being “unaware of what was happening in his own campaign.”
York added that in another new book, Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes reported that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), a major face within the Democratic Party, had “privately harbored concerns” about the risk of hinging the party on Biden’s debate performance against Trump.
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“But there was never a real reckoning with Biden’s condition and all the false statements his representatives and defenders and supporters had made,” York, the Washington Examiner’s chief political correspondent, wrote. “Now, that reckoning might — might — be starting.”
Biden withdrew from the 2024 election on July 21, just over 100 days before Election Day. He then endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump went on to beat Harris, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College.