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Former President Joe Biden’s physical deterioration was severe enough in the second half of his presidency that his aides privately discussed putting him in a wheelchair for his second term, according to a new book from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson. Axios reported Tuesday on the new details from “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” which is being released on May 20. The book is based on more than 200 interviews, mostly with Democratic insiders, almost all of which occurred after the 2024 election was over. According to the report, Biden aides believed it was politically untenable to have the president use a wheelchair during his reelection bid — but they believed he might have to do so if he won a second term. “Biden’s physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair,” the authors write. Biden’s personal physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, privately warned the president’s team that if Biden had a bad fall in 2023 or 2024, “a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery,” Tapper and Thompson report. The details help illustrate how the team around Biden took steps to try to protect him during his reelection bid, including finding shorter walking paths to stages, adding handrails to any steps and using a smaller staircase to board Air Force One, the authors report. Biden’s team had insisted that he was up for a second term until his disastrous June 2024 debate performance against Donald Trump, which led to him dropping out of the race three weeks later. Aides began walking with Biden across the White House lawn to the Marine One helicopter not just to block the visual of his walk — but also in case he fell, according to Axios. Tapper and Thompson report that Biden began forgetting names, staring blankly at people he’d known for well over a decade, and became more disoriented and incoherent when he was fatigued. In response to the book’s reporting, a Biden spokesperson said in a statement to Axios that Biden’s “medical exam made clear that he had a stiffened gait caused, in part, by wear and tear to his spine — but that no special treatment was necessary and that it had not worsened.” “He was transparent about this, and it was far from ‘severe,’” the statement added. “Yes, there were physical changes as he got older, but evidence of aging is not evidence of mental incapacity.” “And so far,” the statement continued, “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.” Biden and his wife Jill Biden defended his performance as president in a joint interview on ABC’s “The View” earlier this month, pushing back on suggestions he experienced cognitive decline in his final year in office. “The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us, and they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day,” Jill Biden said.
