The dam is crumbling. On Saturday, we brought you the story about how some officials admitted anonymously that Joe Biden is “dependably engaged” during the hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.—before or after that, not so much. It’s called “sundowning,” and it’s not what you look for in a commander-in-chief.
Now a new report Sunday describes more tactics used by the Biden inner circle to shield the declining president from the scrutiny of the press or even the White House staff.
The most damning of the allegations comes this time not from secret sources but from former White House deputy director of photography Chandler West, who posted a post-debate Instagram story that was sharply critical of his former boss. Axios reporter Alex Thompson writes that the outlet has obtained the screenshots:
News: Post-debate, the WH’s former deputy photo director Chandler West wrote on Instagram
“It’s time for Joe to go,” per screenshots obtained by Axios.
Reached by phone, West said: “the debate was not the first bad day, and it’s not gonna be the last.”https://t.co/Zgw3jyBFrn pic.twitter.com/TGFmm4peUG
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) June 30, 2024
West argued that it was time for the president to walk away:
“It’s time for Joe to go.” That’s what Chandler West, the White House’s deputy director of photography from January 2021 to May 2022, wrote in an Instagram story after the debate.
“I know many of these people and how the White House operates. They will say he has a ‘cold’ or just experienced a ‘bad night,’ but for weeks and months, in private, they have all said what we saw last night — Joe is not as strong as he was just a couple of years ago,” West wrote, according to screenshots obtained by Axios.
Reached by phone, West said he wrote the post because “the debate was not the first bad day, and it’s not gonna be the last.” He declined to comment further.
It’s been a rough week for the president
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Meanwhile, West doesn’t look like a scary mega MAGA white supremacist fascist to me:
Former White House deputy director of photography Chandler West had better stay away from hotel balconies for a while. Speaking in the wake of Biden’s disastrous TV debate, he said, ‘I know how the White House operates. They will say he had a ‘cold’ or a ‘bad night,’ but for… pic.twitter.com/cI2Bp9NrkQ
— Edward White (@Editorialz) June 30, 2024
The report goes on to list how First Lady Jill and her closest advisers keep the president protected:
Biden’s behavior stunned many in the White House in part because Biden’s closest aides — often led by Jill Biden’s top aide, Anthony Bernal, and deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini — took steps early in his term to essentially rope off the president.
Even the White House’s residence staff, which serves the first family in the mansion’s living quarters, has been kept at arm’s length.
A former residence official told Axios that Jill Biden was “so protective of the president, and then Anthony just protects her, and they often wouldn’t let us do anything for them.”
“The separation between the family and the residence staff was so big, so divided,” the former official said. “It’s not supposed to be and usually isn’t, even in the Trump White House.”
Related: Jill Biden’s Ex-Husband Goes There: ‘She’s the One Who Wants to Be President Now’
In one troubling incident, Biden appeared to feel overheated, although the White House denies there was anything sinister about this episode:
On July 4, 2021, Biden hosted a party on the South Lawn in which he declared “independence” from the coronavirus pandemic.
It was a hot day and after hours outside, Biden went back into the White House through the Diplomatic Room, and then into the nearby Map Room.
Biden sat down and the door was abruptly shut as Biden’s aides blocked the White House butlers and residence staff from aiding the president.
They suggested to the staffers that the president was just a little overheated. But the episode left residence staff feeling like his close aides were creating a barrier around anything possibly related to the president’s health, the former official said.
The thing about a dam is, once it breaks there’s not a whole lot you can do about it but get out of the way and wait for everything to come out. What was once a White House wall of secrecy surrounding Joe Biden’s mental health is starting to crumble, and I expect many other revelations to soon pour out.
