In a new book, Biden aide describes ‘out of it’ president before Trump debate

In a new book, Joe Biden’s former White House chief of staff paints a devastating picture of the then US president’s mental and physical state before the debate with Donald Trump that sent his 2024 campaign into a tailspin, resulting in his relinquishing the Democratic nomination to Kamala Harris.

Ron Klain served Biden from 2021 to 2023, then returned to his side last June, to run debate preparation as he had for numerous Democratic presidents before.

According to Klain, it turned out Biden “didn’t know what Trump had been saying and couldn’t grasp what the back and forth was”; left preparation and fell asleep by the pool; obsessed about foreign leaders, saying “these guys say I’m doing a great job as president so I must be a great president”; “didn’t really understand what his argument was on inflation” and “had nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job”.

As described by Klain to the reporter Chris Whipple, at one point Biden had an idea.

“If he looked perplexed when Trump talked, voters would understand that Trump was an idiot. Klain replied: ‘Sir, when you look perplexed, people just think you’re perplexed. And this is our problem in this race.”

Whipple’s book, Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Biden is reportedly planning his own book but Whipple’s blockbuster is not even the first such volume to hit the shelves. This week saw publication of Fight, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, which also contains extensive reporting on Biden’s decline and Harris’s struggle to win over party elites.

Like Parnes and Allen, Whipple reports both sides of a campaign Trump won despite a criminal conviction, civil penalties including one related to an allegation of rape and indictments over election subversion and retention of classified information.

But Whipple focuses another harsh spotlight on Biden, an octogenarian president long beset by questions about his fitness.

Last week, Whipple told Politico: “I have fresh reporting on an hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis of Biden’s final days, and obviously his decline is a major part of the story.

“I happen to think that to call it a ‘cover-up’ is simplistic. I think it was stranger and way more troubling than that. Biden’s inner circle, his closest advisers, many of them were in a fog of delusion and denial. They believed what they wanted to believe.”

In early 2024, as the campaign warmed up, Klain was among those who said he believed Biden was the right candidate to beat Trump a second time, telling the New York Times: “If I thought he wasn’t the right candidate to beat Donald Trump, I wouldn’t be for him running. But I think he is the right candidate.”

Even after the disastrous debate, by his own telling to Whipple, Klain believed Biden should have stayed in the race – a statement that jars with Klain’s account of debate prep at Camp David.

“At his first meeting with Biden in Aspen Lodge, the president’s cabin,” Whipple writes, Klain “was startled. He’d never seen him so exhausted and out of it. Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool.

“That evening Biden met again with Klain and his team, [Biden aides] Mike Donilon, Steve Richetti, and Bruce Reed. ‘We sat around the table,’ said Klain. ‘[Biden] had answers on cards, and he was just extremely exhausted. And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with Nato leaders.’”

Klain, Whipple writes, “wondered half-seriously if Biden thought he was president of Nato instead of the US. ‘He just became very enraptured with being the head of Nato,’ he said, That wouldn’t help him on Capitol Hill because, as Klain noted, ‘domestic political leaders don’t really care what [Emmanuel] Macron and [Olaf] Scholz think.’”

Klain, fellow aides and visitors including the film mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg tried to get Biden into shape. Two mock debates were organized, focusing on domestic policy.

“The first was scheduled to last 90 minutes but Klain called it off after 45. The president’s voice was shot and so was his grasp of the subject. All he really could talk about was his infrastructure plan and how he was rebuilding America and 16 million jobs. He had nothing to say about his agenda for a second term.”

Klain says Biden grew irritable, saying he would not make promises as he would be criticized for failing to deliver. Klain says he tried to persuade Biden to run on unfinished business, including his attempt to “subsidize state and local efforts to do childcare and bring down the cost to $20 a day. And you ought to try to fight for it again.”

“Biden seemed befuddled,” Whipple writes. “‘Well, that just seems like a big spending program,’ he said.

Klain said: “No, sir. It brings down costs for people. It’s responsive to inflation. It will bring more people into the workforce. It’s good economics. And you know this is something you’re for.”

But “Biden didn’t want to talk about it” and “25 minutes into the second mock debate, the president was done for the day. ‘I’m just too tired to continue and I’m afraid of losing my voice here and I feel bad,’ he said. ‘I just need some sleep. I’ll be fine tomorrow.’ He went off to bed.”

“The president was fatigued, befuddled, and disengaged,” Whipple writes. “Klain feared the debate with Trump would be a nationally televised disaster.”

It was. On 27 June, Biden arrived at the Atlanta venue with minutes to spare – because, Klain said, “He was the president of the United States. They weren’t going to start without him.” Onstage, for two hours and six minutes, Biden stumbled, stared and mumbled.

As described by Whipple, Jill Biden praised her husband’s performance but all others around the president could see “something was terribly wrong”. Whipple quotes an unnamed close friend of Biden who took a call from Valerie Biden Owens. The president’s sister and longtime adviser was “so angry, she was practically incoherent”. The same friend reports a later call from Biden, laughing at his predicament and sounding like the senator and vice-president of old.

“Where did that voice go?” the friend wondered … “Where did that guy with that voice go? What the fuck happened to this guy?”

To Whipple, that was a question “on which the political fate of the nation would turn”.

Eventually, Biden bowed to reality. On 21 July, Klain took a call from Jeff Zients, his successor as chief of staff. Biden was out. Despite the debate disaster, the news was a “gut punch” to Klain.

“Jeff, that’s too bad,” he said. “I think that’s a mistake. I think this was an avoidable tragedy.”

Harris faced opposition from Democratic grandees including Obama and Nancy Pelosi, but wrapped up the nomination by August. In early September, Klain gave Whipple his interview. With the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate, Harris mounted an energetic campaign. In November, she lost to Trump.