
President Biden met with a group of Democrat governors on July 3 hoping to allay concerns about his poor debate performance last month.
According to sources who attended the meeting or were briefed on the president’s comments, Biden admitted that he needed to work fewer hours and get more sleep. He also told the governors that he planned to stop holding events after 8:00 p.m.
White House aides previously admitted that the president only remained “dependably engaged” between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. and acknowledged that the White House tried to keep all public events within that six-hour window.
The unnamed aides told Axios reporter Alex Thompson that it is when Biden is outside of that window that he is more likely to suffer verbal gaffes and grow fatigued.
Other former and current White House officials admitted that Biden’s lapses had become more pronounced and frequent over the last few months.
Despite that, the president told the governors that he wasn’t dropping out of the presidential race, again blaming the debate performance on jet lag from international travel earlier in June.
Biden repeatedly claimed that he had pushed himself too hard before the June 27 debate and ignored his staff’s advice about his schedule. The president told the governors that he needed to cut back on his hours and avoid holding events after 8:00 p.m.
When Hawaii Governor Josh Green, who is a doctor, asked Biden about his health, the president said that the problem wasn’t his health but “my brain.” While most of the governors suspected that the comment was a joke, one was alarmed by the remark, sources said.
Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who also attended the meeting, said in a statement that the comment about Biden’s brain was “clearly” a joke.
In his much-anticipated interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Biden again dismissed his poor debate performance as simply a “bad night” which he blamed on exhaustion.
When asked if he would be willing to undergo an independent cognitive test, Biden refused and told Stephanopoulos that he has a cognitive test every day.