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5 months ago
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Former CNN host Brian Stelter said the White House "deserves to be scrutinized" about whether there was a "cover-up" of President Biden's decline as calls mount for him to drop out of the race.
"Some people feel they were misled or even conned by people in the Biden camp, I think that’s what this has a lot to do with," Stelter said Thursday on CNN, referring to donors to the president's campaign.
"I think [the White House] also deserves to be scrutinized now about whether there was a cover-up and whether they were covering up something about Biden by keeping them away from the press," he added.
Since Biden's debate performance, there has been increasing doubts from the media, allies, and members of the Democratic Party over whether the 81-year-old president is up to the job.
FORMER NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR ACCUSES WHITE HOUSE OF ‘MASSIVE COVER-UP’ ON BIDEN'S DECLINE
At the debate, Biden appeared frail and confused at times, and the White House has been in damage control by lining up more media interviews for Biden in attempts to assuage these concerns. However, his performance in those interviews and reports that several were scripted, has not seemed to turn the tide of Democrats calling for him to step down.
On Thursday afternoon, news broke that the Biden campaign successfully requested two edits to a radio interview he did that aired in Wisconsin on July 4.
Stelter defended the White House's "strategy" in keeping Biden out of the limelight leading up to the debate, but said it deserved questions about whether staffers were purposefully hiding signs of the president's age and decline from the press.
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Stelter's comments come on the heels of longtime Democratic donor George Clooney penning a brutal essay calling on Biden to step aside on Wednesday. Clooney claimed that he personally witnessed signs of Biden's decline at the lavish Hollywood fundraiser he hosted for the president in June with former President Obama.
"It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate," Clooney wrote.
"Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign," he continued.
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Some Democrats have also privately admitted since the debate that they've known about Biden's decline for a long time.
Stelter claimed Biden allies were in "denial" about these concerns before the debate" but "all that's been ripped off now."
"You can't unsee what's going on here, and that's fundamentally the problem here for Biden," he continued.
President Biden has defied calls for him to drop out of the race, telling his party and supporters several times this week that he is not stepping down. He will face questions from the media on Thursday evening at his first solo presser since the debate.
