By Reagan Reese, Daily Caller News Foundation | April 02, 2025
One of former President Joe Biden’s senior aides admitted in a new book that the 82-year-old couldn’t grasp the back and forth of debate and would fall asleep by the pool while they prepped for his showdown with Trump, according to a book excerpt.
Top Biden aide Ron Klain, who helped the former president with debate prep, was “half-seriously” wondering if Biden believed he was the president of NATO rather than the president of the United States, according to the excerpt of Chris Whipple’s new book published by The Guardian. While they prepped, Klain reportedly told Whipple that the then 81-year-old president “didn’t know what Trump had been saying and couldn’t grasp what the back and forth was” and would have to cut training sessions short because he was tired.
“The president was fatigued, befuddled, and disengaged,” the excerpt reads. “Klain feared the debate with Trump would be a nationally televised disaster.”
Biden’s first training session for the debate was called off halfway through the 90 minutes it was schedule for because the former president was failing to grasp domestic policy, according to the excerpt.
As the former president became irritable, Klain pushed Biden to run on “unfinished business” and 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,” according to the excerpt.
“Biden seemed befuddled,” Whipple continues. “‘Well, that just seems like a big spending program,’ he 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,” Klain responded, according to the book.
“‘I’m just too tired to continue and I’m afraid of losing my voice here and I feel bad,’ [Biden] said. ‘I just need some sleep. I’ll be fine tomorrow.’ He went off to bed,” the book writes of their second training session.
Klain was also struck by how “out of touch” Biden was with the American people, Whipple writes. The president’s first training session was not much different from the second, according to the excerpt.
“At his first meeting with Biden in Aspen Lodge, the president’s cabin,” Whipple recounts, 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.” Biden fell asleep by the pool after leaving the prep, according to The Guardian.
Klain was right. Biden’s debate against Trump was a disaster and he would be forced out of the presidential race by his own party a few weeks later. Two months after the debate which sparked widespread concern about Biden’s fitness among the legacy media and other Democrats, Klain defended Biden.
“I don’t deny that it was a bad debate performance, that’s different than whether or not the president is up to the job,” Klain told CNN. “He’s clearly up to the job. He’s doing it every day. He’s doing it successfully.”
Klain doubled down on his August statements to the New York Post following The Gaurdian’s story.
“I never doubted the president’s mental acuity,” Klain told the outlet. “He had become singularly focused on foreign policy and detached from Democratic allies in the pursuit of GOP support on Ukraine and Israel.”
But as Whipple reports, Klain seemed gravely concerned about Biden in the weeks leading up to the debate. Biden suggested at one point that him looking confused would suggest Trump was incoherent, the aide said.
“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,” the excerpt reads.
Regan Reese is a white house correspondent at the Daily Caller News Foundation
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