David Axelrod stumbles when asked point blank if Karine Jean-Pierre lied about Joe Biden’s mental decline

Former Obama chief campaign strategist David Axelrod appeared to stumble Monday on CNN when asked whether former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lied about not seeing any signs of mental decline in former President Joe Biden.

On CNN’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt,” Axelrod noted that it was “pretty obvious” Biden shouldn’t have run in the 2024 election — before being asked whether he believes Jean-Pierre when she claims she never saw “any sort of mental decline” in the former president.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Axelrod said. “I mean, you know, people have said different things and, you know, the public witnessed what it witnessed.”

“But even if, even if, he, even if he [Biden] was functioning in an impeccable way, then if you want to accept that, the idea that we knew how he was going to be when he was 83 and 84 and 85 and 86, I think is far-fetched,” Axelrod added. “And that was what was irresponsible.”

WATCH:

Following Biden’s disastrous debate against President Donald Trump in June 2024, White House logs reviewed by the New York Post reportedly showed a top Washington, D.C. neurologist had met with former White House physician Kevin O’Connor earlier that year. During the debate, Biden could be seen struggling to finish his arguments and freezing mid-sentence at one point.

Calls for the former president to withdraw from the race quickly came from Democrats and media pundits who had once urged him to run. By July 21, 2024, Biden announced he would step down from the race and instead endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.

For years, Democrats downplayed Biden’s mental decline, with lawmakers calling him “sharp” and aides dismissing videos of him stumbling or misspeaking as “cheap fakes.” Republicans had long warned about signs of Biden’s fading mental acuity prior to his 2020 campaign, but many Democrats continued to defend him until the debate.

Now, with Republicans investigating Biden’s mental fitness during his time in office, both O’Connor and former Jill Biden chief of staff Anthony Bernal have pleaded the Fifth before lawmakers, refusing to answer questions about their time in the White House and the former president’s cognitive health.

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