A senior aide in former President Joe Biden‘s administration conceded in an interview that the Biden campaign was “gaslighting” the public over concerns of the former president’s age and his ability to defeat Donald Trump.
Michael LaRosa, a former press secretary for Jill Biden, spoke to veteran reporter Tara Palmeri.
He was pressed to discuss an upcoming book by Axios’s Alex Thompson and CNN anchor Jake Tapper titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Coverup, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”
The book reportedly will cover the administration and campaign’s work to tamp down concerns over Biden’s age and ability to do the job as president for another term.
“Cover-up to me is a little hard, a little harsh. Every politician, everybody, every human being tries to cover up age. We were always, from day one, cognizant that age was an issue,” LaRosa said in response.
He went on:
“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 gaslighting because that’s what they were doing, the campaign, former colleagues. 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 anything. Well, it became too early. And these polls don’t mean anything for about a year and a half. The polls, the numbers never moved.
“But by denying the data that was out there publicly, by denying the really insightful journalism, you know, they were actually demeaning to a lot of the people. But it was the data denial that really bothered me because we loved polling when we were running because we were always ahead.”
The former staffer also described Biden’s inner circle as being “scared to death” to let Biden have free rein to do interviews.
“The president’s team was scared to death of impromptu, unscripted, un-rehearsed, unpracticed, un-choreographed, anything, they couldn’t compete for the attention economy,” LaRosa said.
“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,” he said.
Biden bowed out of the presidential race after a disastrous debate performance against Trump.