Check out these insights from within the White House, being leaked by staff now being pilloried for letting Joe get himself into big debate trouble. Politico reports.
Inside the White House, Biden’s growing limitations were becoming apparent long before his meltdown in last week’s debate, with the senior team’s management of the president growing more strictly controlled as his term has gone on. During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings they’ll deliver to Biden, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information being presented in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction.
“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” said one senior administration official. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him.”
The official said, “He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it.”
A key thing for us outsiders to remember, the people talking above aren't civil servants. They are appointees who work at the pleasure of the president and can be out of a job quickly.
We think, "Just tell him the truth, so what if he gets mad." They think, "If he gets mad I could be unemployed this afternoon, out on my ear. So I'm going to keep him happy, even if doing so isn't in his best interest."
As some pundit noted, one of the characteristics of dementia sufferers is flying into rages.
