Gavin Newsom claims he only noticed Biden’s ‘cognitive decline’ once before debate

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on a Wednesday podcast that he only observed former President Joe Biden’s diminished mental acuity a single time prior to his disastrous June 2024 debate against President Donald Trump.

Academy Award-winning actor George Clooney wrote a New York Times op-ed published in July 2024, asserting that the Biden he saw at a June 15 fundraising event was identical to the debate, referring to the president’s mental difficulties. Newsom, on “This Is Gavin Newsom,” told the authors of “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” that Americans likely believe he was not sufficiently forthcoming about Biden’s health, but insisted that he only witnessed a sign of “decline” at the fundraiser Clooney wrote about.

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“The word ‘gaslighting’ came up in this book over and over and over again, and how the American people may have felt,” Newsom said. “And I know there’s other books being written in this space, and how people feel like, and I imagine I’m among them, that people were not expressive enough about where Joe Biden was in terms of what was perceived or real as it relates to his physical health or cognitive decline.”

“I, of course, never experienced any of that, quite literally. So, I would have been lying if I played to that, except one event, which you referenced in the book, and that’s the fundraiser — the infamous George Clooney fundraiser — where it was clear, and that, for me, jet lag was as easy a way to describe that as anything else,” he continued. “But it was clear that something was a little bit off or different.”

Newsom, during a July 2024 press conference, brushed off Biden’s appearance at the fundraiser as the president being “exhausted” due to how late it took place and him traveling from overseas.

Biden publicly seemed to call on the late Republican Indiana Rep. Jackie Walorski to stand up in September 2022, appearing to forget she had perished in a car crash the month prior.

Special counsel Robert Hur also issued a February 2024 report finding evidence that Biden willfully kept classified documents. However, he opted not to bring charges against the then-president because the jury might view him as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Several clips of Biden garnered attention in June 2024 for highlighting the president’s diminished fitness and increased gaffes, which included freezing and wandering off. The White House, in the month leading up to the debate, characterized the worrisome clips of Biden as “cheap fakes.”

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