A former senior CNN reporter offered a “confession” and an “apology” Thursday, admitting he should have “pushed harder” to cover President Joe Biden’s mental breakdown.
Chris Cillizza, the former political reporter for the Washington Post who later joined CNN as managing editor before leaving the network in 2022, posted a video on his YouTube page Thursday admitting that he failed to cover as well as should Biden’s slippage signs even though Republicans urged him to do so.
“As a journalist, I have a confession to make,” Cillizza said in the video clip on Thursday.
“I should have made more of an effort earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline.”
According to Cillizza, Republicans “pinged me regularly” during his tenure at CNN to ask why he didn’t address obvious signs of the 82-year-old president’s deterioration.
Cillizza recalled how he would “find out” because he hadn’t seen “evidence” that Biden was faltering — despite multiple verbal gaffes, physical setbacks and instances during which the president appeared to pass out while speaking in public.
A bombshell report from the Wall Street Journal on Thursday detailed how Biden’s aides carefully managed his presidency in order to hide the extent of his age-related decline.
According to the Gazette, meetings that had been planned between Biden and top national security officials as early as spring 2021 would either be rescheduled or canceled altogether because the president “has good days and bad days and today was a bad day. “
Lawmakers told the Gazette they had limited contact with the president, who was largely isolated from his fiercely loyal staff.
The former CNN pundit, who read portions of the Journal’s report in his video, said he accepted the White House’s position that Biden was fine and that he was prevented from pursuing the case because of the guilt he felt over the “shaming of the president’s age. .
“The White House and the people around Joe Biden were absolutely adamant that to suggest anything — to question whether he was in any physical, mental, or both decline was offensive,” Cillizza said Thursday.
“‘How can you? It’s a shame about the age.’ And I think that affected me on some level,” he admitted.
Cillizza said that “while I occasionally asked the question… I didn’t really push it, to be honest.”
“Now, once I left CNN and once it became a little clearer to me about Biden’s age, I think I’ve written pretty regularly and talked regularly about how I wasn’t sure what this guy was capable of. added the former expert.
“And then, obviously, after the June 27 debate, everyone, including me, was writing and talking about it.”
The debate, which made it clear to the public that Biden was on the wane, prompted Democratic power brokers, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to push him out of the presidential race.
Biden then endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the Nov. 5 election to Donald Trump.
“I probably should have pushed more on the Biden-age stuff because, in retrospect, it’s clear that people close to him knew that at best, he had some good days and some bad days,” Cillizza admitted. .
“June 27, the debate was definitely a bad day. But if the bad day was as bad, as bad as he performed on that debate stage, the fact that he had been president without many questions being asked about his physical and mental decline… I think it’s a little disturbing and begging. the question when did the people around him know, what did they know and why didn’t they share it?” Cillizza said.
Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, attacked Cillizza as she pointed out that “there was no bigger, more obsessive ‘True McCain’ about my father’s age when he ran in 2008. [when he was 71 mind you) than Chris.”
“He ignored Biden because he’s a hack,” McCain wrote on X.
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