Former President Bill Clinton defended Joe Biden on Sunday amid claims that the immediate past president suffered from cognitive decline in office and staffers in the White House tried to cover it up.
“I saw President Biden not very long ago, and I thought he was in good shape,” Clinton said during a CBS Sunday Morning interview.
Pressed on whether he witnessed signs of mental decline in Biden Clinton responded “no.”
“I thought he was a good president. The only concern I thought he had to deal with was, could anybody do that job until they were 86?” Clinton added, referring to the age Biden would have been if he had won a second term. “We’d had several long talks. He was always on top of his briefs.”
Last month, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson released their book Original Sin, citing anonymous sources who claimed that several White House officials were concerned about Biden’s mental fitness during the final year of his presidency.
Clinton said Sunday that he hasn’t read the book because Biden is no longer president and the current president poses a bigger threat to the country.
“I didn’t want to because he’s not president anymore, and I think he did a good job,” Clinton said. “And I think we are facing challenges today with our president in our history. Some people are trying to use this as a way to blame him for the fact that Trump was reelected.”
