Now it Can Be Told (Again) - Part 739 (05-13-2025--Hour2)

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[00:00:30] Chapter 739 in Now It Can Be Told Again. That's right. Joe Biden's physical deterioration was so severe in 2023 and 2024 that even though we could all see it, and even though his advisors and all the Democrats in the media, but I repeat myself, were denying it, advisors privately discussed the possibility of the Biden administration.

[00:00:58] The possibility that he would need to use a wheelchair if he won re-election. This was a conversation that his people had. They were going to have to have him in a wheelchair, but after the election. This according to CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson in their new book coming out May 20th, Original Sin.

[00:01:28] Which I'm like, what is the original sin that he thought he could win again? Is that the original sin or is it that he... I'm not going to buy the book. But they're releasing excerpts of the book. And Jake Tapper, this guy... Like, I used to have a modicum of respect for this guy. I mean, it's been a long time, don't get me wrong. It's been like years ago that I thought... He's not as terrible as like a lot of the other people, but he just went...

[00:01:57] Like, Trump broke him. And we played the clip before of him haranguing Lara Trump when she was, what, the RNC co-chair, I think? And she was talking about Joe Biden's mental decline and he was like, he has a stutter! It's a stutter! What do you think people with stutters think about your criticism? Because that's what's going on.

[00:02:22] Like, he would savage anybody that even suggested that Joe Biden was in mental cognitive decline. And now he's got a book where he and Alex Thompson from Axios have interviewed 200 people and they're saying, yeah, he was in decline. Which we could all see.

[00:02:44] The discussions reflected the extent of the president's declining health, particularly the significant degeneration of his spine and his AIDS alarm over it as Biden sought a second term at age 81. The conversations also revealed the White House's determination to conceal the reality of Biden's condition. Well, no crap. We all knew that.

[00:03:13] But we were covering this for years. And we were accused of doing cheap fakes. That's a cheap fake. We would point out, hey, do you hear the audio of Joe Biden during these like one or two interviews that he would do in the entire tenure? The audio sounds really weird. Why is that? Because his voice is so low that they have to raise the mic volume all the way up.

[00:03:39] And when you raise the mic volume all the way up in order to capture the frail vocal cords, then you get room noise. And it just sounds like underneath. And that's the way all of it. I pointed this out when he was on The View the other day, last week. Same thing. They have to they got to crank up his his mic levels because his voice is so weak.

[00:04:08] We identified that we identified his gait the way he walked. Right. And they tried to tell us that's because he broke his foot. Remember that? The book is based on interviews with more than 200 people, mostly Democrat insiders, with knowledge of the events that unfolded during the final two years of Biden's presidency. Almost all of the interviews took place after the 2024 election. Right.

[00:04:35] So 200 people now doing interviews. Which tells you what? They knew. Which kind of lays bare the lie that, you know, two people can keep a secret as long as one of them is dead. People can keep secrets if they are invested in the secret getting kept. Internal discussions.

[00:05:01] By the way, this is from Axios is Alex Thompson writing a writing this story. It's adapted from the forthcoming book. Original Sin President Biden's decline, its cover up and his disastrous choice to run again. Internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair occurred, but they determined they could not do so until after the election. Biden's aides believed it was politically untenable. So think about this.

[00:05:29] You have a man who is 81 years old. And is in need of or would benefit from the use of a wheelchair. And the people around him. The people that supposedly love him. Work for him. Admire him. Believe in what he's doing. Right.

[00:05:52] These are the people that ostensibly care the most about Joe Biden, the individual, the man. And they said, don't let him use the wheelchair. We're not going to give that man. A wheelchair that. We think he needs. Because. It would jeopardize our power. So sorry, Joe. We'll give you some sneakers. Right.

[00:06:21] We'll give you some some grippy sneakers. We'll surround you with staffers as you walk across the lawn. So this way, if you start to fall, they'll catch you and they'll they'll block the camera view of you walking oddly across the lawn. Right. We'll do all of this other stuff, but we're not going to give you the thing that you need, which is the wheelchair. Biden aides thought it would be politically untenable.

[00:06:45] Now, his physician, a fellow by the name of Kevin O'Connor, had long privately expressed concern about the toll that the presidency was taking on Joe Biden's health. The doctor often argued with Biden's political officials to get more rest time into the president's schedule. More naps. I'm his doctor. I'm prescribing more naps.

[00:07:07] O'Connor sometimes quipped that Biden's staff members were trying to kill him while he was trying to keep it while he, the doctor, was trying to keep Joe alive. Biden's team had increasing fears of a fall. Particularly after he tripped over that sandbag at the Air Force Academy in June 2023. Remember that? And remember, they blamed whoever put the sandbag there.

[00:07:34] Aides then began taking many more precautions to avoid a repeat. They tried to figure out shorter walking paths. They began insisting on handrails for steps up to the stage at his appearances. They had him wear sneakers more often. They changed his visual briefings before events to ensure he knew every step he was expected to take and guided him more carefully through the movements. We saw all of this. Right?

[00:08:03] They had stuff marked out on the floor for him. Right? And that happens in the theater. They do, like, blocking. They put tape, you know, markers. They put your mark on the ground so you know where to go. They would... But that's why, you know, at the end he was always, like, looking for somebody to guide him away because that's what they were doing. They told him, we'll come get you. We're gonna... We'll walk you off the stage. We'll walk you here. We'll do this.

[00:08:38] We'll walk you off the stage. We'll walk you off the stage.

[00:09:28] He only had to wear the walking boot for 10 weeks and that the injury, quote, healed as expected. I mean, according to the doctor. But what does he know? He's no political aide. O'Connor said that he had... That Biden was suffering from significant spinal arthritis. And that explained the changes in Joe Biden's walk, his gait. If only there were signs.

[00:10:22] All right. I put the link in the podcast description, too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news.com. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:10:52] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Okay. Axios.com. In an exclusive by one of their reporters who withheld the information until after the election, Alex Thompson, writing in his book with Jake Tapper called Original Sin, the thing that we all could see with our own eyes was, in fact, true. Joe Biden was old.

[00:11:20] Joe Biden was suffering from physical and cognitive decline. According to the story, which folk, this excerpt in Axios focuses on his physical infirmities. Because that's what a lot of media, that was like the safe thing where they could talk about his age, but it was about his physical decline. Because they could see him walking and why is he stumbling? Oh my gosh, he took another fall, right?

[00:11:49] They're still not leaning into the cognitive side of this stuff yet. But according to the report, Biden, his family, and senior White House officials pushed forward with the president's re-election campaign despite seeing signs of, here it is, physical and mental decline over the course of his administration. A Biden spokesperson, Andrew Bates, who declined to be identified, said in a statement to Axios,

[00:12:19] quote, Yes, there were physical changes as he got older, but evidence of aging is not evidence of mental incapacity. And so far, we are still waiting for someone, anyone, to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential address where he was unable to do his job because of mental decline. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite. He was a very effective president.

[00:12:48] So no one has presented, the gaslighting continues. The gaslighting will continue until everybody believes it or they think they're insane, which is kind of what gaslighting is all about. You don't have anybody, nobody has pointed out a presidential decision or address where he was unable to do his job.

[00:13:13] Hey, do you remember that time Joe Biden was replaced by Dr. Jilson, his wife, at one of the cabinet meetings? She ran the meeting or something. Remember that? Oh, how about the time where he sat around the table and they had to turn all of the placards with people's names on them? They had to turn them all to face Joe. Yeah, because he was forgetting his own staffers and cabinet secretaries. He didn't know the people's names around him.

[00:13:45] Remember that? Andrew Powell at the Independent Journalism Review, IJR.com. A top advisor has said in an upcoming book that former President Joe Biden ruined the campaign hopes of former Vice President Kamala Harris by staying in the race too long before bowing out. According to The Guardian, David Plouffe, who managed former President Barack Obama's winning 2008 presidential campaign and was a senior advisor in Obama's White House,

[00:14:15] he was recruited to help with Harris's campaign and her nightmare 107-day sprint against Donald Trump. This is from the same book, Original Sin. They're blaming Biden. It's all Biden, Plouffe was reported as saying while reflecting on Biden's decision to run for re-election and then continue on for more than three weeks after his debate against Trump went disastrously. While raising questions about his mental acuity and age, Plouffe said, quote, he totally bleeped us.

[00:14:44] I love this idea that Kamala Harris would have won but for Joe Biden staying in the race as long as he did. Right? Like, that's the reason. No. The longer she ran, the worse she did. People didn't like what they were seeing and they were seeing more of it and they were liking her less. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain? And Cabins of Asheville is your connection.

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[00:16:06] Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Got a Pete tweet from Jeff who says, Pete, do you think Joe Biden is still riding the bicycle? I don't know. That's... I don't know. I could... Well, I could see either way on that. Like, on the one hand, God know he could fall and break a hip and that's it, right?

[00:16:32] But on the other hand, maybe they recommend that he do it to, you know, to keep in shape. You know, you got to stay active and put some big training wheels on the side of it so he doesn't tip over. Maybe. I don't know. I'm not trying to be mean. I'm saying like, if it's good, if he enjoys bicycling and you got some bike paths you can ride on, maybe he rides the bike on the beach at one of his mansions. I don't know. So, let me go.

[00:17:00] I mentioned Jake Tapper, one of the authors of this book, Original Sin. And two anecdotes from this book were provided to The Guardian. They've got excerpts. And this is from... Hang on a second. Where am I pulling this from? Jim Garrity at National Review. He has these excerpts.

[00:17:25] First, one senior aide who quit the White House because they did not think Biden should run admits to the authors of the book, quote, That's not physical, folks. That's mental. You're shielding him from his own staff.

[00:17:56] And what Garrity says is if you're afraid of the president's staff interacting with him for fear that they will leak, that the president has declined so much that he can't perform his duties, then he should not be president. Guys, what are we doing here? Right? You're like, oh, we got to keep everybody away from him. Okay, well, then he can't keep doing the job. If you're worried about somebody leaking that he is in mental cognitive decline, then that's the point where you exercise the 25th Amendment option.

[00:18:25] You know, the thing you guys were experts on four years prior when Trump was the president. And you were saying that he needed to be removed for 25th Amendment purposes. I know you are aware this exists. And yet here you are with your own guy. Displaying the very kinds of behavior that you accuse Trump of displaying.

[00:18:48] And your response is to not do the thing for the country that you demanded Republicans do, that Trump's cabinet do. You said they had to do that. And then when your guy is actually in that position of cognitive decline, you just freeze out all of the people around him. His secretaries. Why would he be freezing out the secretaries? Because they're the ones who would exercise the 25th Amendment. Right?

[00:19:18] So you got to keep them in the dark. No wonder Lloyd Austin disappeared for a couple of weeks, not telling anybody where he was. He probably thought, like, nobody really cares what I'm doing anyway. I don't ever meet with the president. And so I'm just going to go in for the surgery. I'm going to go to the hospital for a couple of weeks and I'll be back. It's fine. It's almost as if everybody around Joe Biden feared that his mental declines affect on the election,

[00:19:44] but had no fear for his mental declines consequences for the country. Jim Garrity is exactly right. So that's the first anecdote. Here's the second from the Guardian newspaper. Quote, Since at least 2022, Biden has been increasingly prone to lose his train of thought and struggle to remember the names of top aides. His speeches can be incoherent and difficult to hear.

[00:20:10] When he proved incapable of delivering a two-minute video address without stumbling, aides filmed him with two cameras so the edit would be less obvious. I think this is a two-shot. You set up two different cameras. I think it was actually I Love Lucy was the first television program ever filmed with multiple cameras.

[00:20:34] And so they could do cut to camera one, cut to camera two, cut to camera back to one, back to two, and you had mission control, back in the control room, and a director saying, you know, go to camera one, all right, back to two. So both camera operators are always running. They're always filming. And then the director makes the call on which shot to use.

[00:20:59] Well, that's what they did for Joe Biden's two-minute speech. And this was known, by the way. We talked about this because Stephen Miller at The Spectator talked about it, who made repeated observations about how often Joe Biden videos featured what's called jump cuts. A jump cut is where there's obviously an edit point. And then, like, obvious because, like, maybe the president is kind of looking off to the right.

[00:21:29] And then the next, you know, the next cut is him looking off to the left. It's a jump cut. It's not a smooth transition. And we could tell. And the reason why you do the jump cuts is because he can't even get through a sentence. They had to just keep having him restate, restate, restate until they got one they could use. And then they would edit in each sentence.

[00:21:55] And then they try to make it look intentional with the jump cuts, like it's edgy. But no, it's indicative of him not being able to read through a two-minute looking-at-the-camera comment. Yeah. But everybody else, it was all cheap fakes. Yeah. Here's Jake Tapper. This is a montage from our friend over at Graibian named Tom Elliott, Graibian Media. This is the supercut.

[00:22:25] Jake Tapper. Basically helping advance the conspiracy by telling everybody who saw what was going on that they didn't really see what they were going on. How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that? It's very clearly a cognitive decline. Okay. That's what I'm referring to. It makes me uncomfortable. You are no... You watch the money on stage search for questions. I can't... It's so amazing. It's so amazing to me that... And then try and figure out an answer. A cognitive decline.

[00:22:54] Biden embraces his stutter, talking about it, while Trump mocks it, exaggerates it, belittles it. He's sharp physically. I mean, mentally. Yeah. I think the question is physically, right? Right. Or so? Right. Right. And the guy who's his chief opponent is only three or four years younger than him. Exactly. I mean, you have questioned President Biden's age, mental fitness, ability to lead of those supporting Biden. You said, quote, shame on all of you, pretending everything is okay. You're leading us and him into a disaster. Do you worry that you damaged him at all? I don't doubt that you got hugs and...

[00:23:23] By the way, this is in his interview with Dean Phillips, remember, who was a Democrat trying to beat Joe Biden in a primary. But then the Democrats closed their primary. And handshakes behind closed doors today. And maybe even publicly, some of them because they like you personally. But I've heard a lot of really nasty stuff about you from your Democratic colleagues. I mean, just like, what is he thinking? Exercise in narcissism.

[00:23:48] I mean, false claims to the Wall Street Journal about President Biden's mental fitness and acuity. He's 81 and his memory, you know, it doesn't seem great. It's not horrible. But I don't understand the outrage. Quote, behind closed doors, Biden shows signs of slipping. Unquote. The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp, which is run by the Murdochs. Beyond the headline, there is some critical nuance here. The article is mostly based on observations of Republicans with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the only one going on the record.

[00:24:18] They do note in the article that most of the criticism comes from Republicans. Have you heard any concerns from anyone who has met with President Biden about him seeming a little slower? No. The Russians are trying to do to make us and the public not trust our election integrity. Joe Biden has dimension, all this stuff. Yeah. That was Jake Tapper during the election cycle.

[00:24:44] Denying and attacking anybody who saw what we all could see. Headline from the Babylon Bee, Jake Tapper uncovers startling evidence that Biden's decline was covered up by Jake Tapper. All right. So spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime.

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[00:26:08] So I guess this would be, now it can be told, chapter 740. Former President Joe Biden had to be repeatedly reminded that the movie star he was speaking with at a June 2024 fundraiser was his longtime friend, George Clooney. That's in the new book from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Now it can be told.

[00:26:38] Clooney and Biden had known each other for about two decades before this high-profile California fundraiser. But Biden's diminished physical appearance was a quote-unquote holy poop moment, except he didn't say poop, for Clooney. Clooney had not seen Joe since 2022. This excerpt from the book was published in the New Yorker.

[00:27:09] The book quotes an aide telling Joe Biden when he saw Clooney and didn't recognize him. The aide says, you know George. George Clooney. And then, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, George, how's it going? The authors write, quote, Clooney was shaken to his core. The president hadn't recognized him, a man he had known for years.

[00:27:38] According to the book, others at the fundraiser described Joe Biden as, quote, slow and almost catatonic. It was, to some of them, terrifying. And as you heard in the clip that I played from Gravian News, the supercut, the montage of all of the Jake Tapper denialisms,

[00:28:02] Jake Tapper was constantly pointing out when the Wall Street Journal did its story, which was really the first big story that exposed the widespread concerns of Joe Biden's declining mental and cognitive state. And he kept pointing out that, oh, these are mostly Republican sources. Those Republicans, they're just attacking him.

[00:28:27] He just dismissed all of this criticism, all of these observations because they were Republican. And there's a word for that. Partisanship. Right. As a journalist, which Jake Tapper was a Democrat comms guy before he landed at CNN. But in journalism, right, you're supposed to you're supposed to try to understand and recognize, identify the motivations for why people are talking with you and giving you information.

[00:28:56] And yes, while one point would be that Republicans are talking to the Wall Street Journal for this article because they want Joe Biden to lose. However, the inverse is also true. And you also have to take that into account that Democrats are not wanting to talk about it. They are not admitting what is obvious because they, too, have a political stake in denying it.

[00:29:26] And while Jake Tapper could easily identify any kind of political motivation from the Republicans, he just couldn't he just couldn't see any on the left. They're just there's just nothing from the Democrats. It's one of the things I've talked about this in the past. When you go to journalism in school, you have to pick one or the other. It's a superpower that you get with your diploma and you only get to pick one.

[00:29:54] So you can identify the political machinations of the Republicans or of the Democrats. You can't see both. So it's unfortunate. I don't know why they haven't figured out why to grant have had a grant like maybe just a little bit of each from each party kind of thing. But now. That's the only explanation I can come up with. And then, of course, they had the debate.

[00:30:18] And then, of course, three weeks later, George Clooney writes his op ed and he said, it's devastating to say it. But the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe big effing deal Biden of 2010. And people saw Clooney's op ed at the time. We talked about it at the time that he was the voice of Barack Obama. George Clooney was writing what Barack could not. Because I don't think Joe and Jill. Sorry, Dr. Jill.

[00:30:48] I don't think they've ever. Gone swimming off of the yacht owned by George Clooney in some foreign paradise. That was the Obamas. So the Obamas and the Clooney's are are tight. And so when Clooney wrote the op ed, there's no way that was not signed off. On by by Barack Obama. And that's the way it was interpreted. And then, of course, shortly thereafter, Joe Biden is cooed.

[00:31:18] He says he will be dropping out. And then, of course, he is to blame for staying in the race, even though everybody around him. Right. That concealed this decline. Nobody else knew what was going on. Nobody else could see it. Only we could see it from way down here in Charlotte. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

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