‘We need to talk about this': Bernstein says sources raised concerns about Biden’s decline

In an election featuring the two oldest presidential candidates the country has ever seen, age is at the top of many voters’ minds. Concerns about President Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities have been circulating since the CNN Presidential Debate in Atlanta last week, where his stumbles in the debate against Trump reportedly alarmed voters and political donors alike.

But according to veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, these concerns are nothing new to those closest to the President, many of whom have been sounding the alarm on Biden’s cognitive abilities for the past year. In an interview with CNN on Monday, Bernstein told Anderson Cooper that Ron Klain, one of Biden’s top advisors and the former White House chief of staff, has long been fielding reports of the president’s decline.

“The people I’ve talked to have all been to Ron Klain in the last year to say, ‘We have a problem,’” Bernstein told Anderson Cooper, citing a fundraising event in June 2023 at which Biden reportedly faltered while giving a speech at a podium and had to sit down.

“What these folks are saying, and have been saying for a while, is, ‘Yes, he’s great when we see him, as we have tonight, but he also has these inexplicable moments that we are very concerned about. .. We need to talk about this,’” Bernstein said.

However, according to Bernstein’s sources, Klain has reportedly been dismissive of these concerns.

“They’ve been pushed back repeatedly whenever it’s been brought up,” he said.

While Bernstein said he’s been repeatedly told that Biden is alert and engaged during national security meetings and that the president has an “absolute command of the facts,” his apparent cognitive issues still raise concerns among political leaders.

“We’re clearly dealing with two sets of one person, and it really needs to be explored, according to the people I’m talking to,” Bernstein said. “I think an awful lot of major Democrats believe this, including some who have made statements to the contrary. But this is a problem that’s not going to go away unless it’s explicable.”

Maya Homan is a 2024 election fellow at USA TODAY, focusing on Georgia politics. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, as @MayaHoman.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Carl Bernstein says Biden's age is a concern behind the scenes