Biden aides joked about prez’s ‘hours’ with China’s Xi — suggested he take cognitive test: book

WASHINGTON — Former President Joe Biden’s senior staff would “joke” about him giving “vastly different accounts” of how much time he’d spent with Chinese President Xi Jinping — even as some aides suggested he take a cognitive test to dispel speculation about his mental fitness, according to a bombshell book out Tuesday.

“There was a joke among senior staff about how many hours [Biden] had actually spent with Chinese President Xi Jinping because he often provided vastly different accounts,” write Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf in “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America.”

“Sometimes it was thirty-six hours. Other times it was seventy hours. Or maybe it was ninety-some hours,” the authors added.

Biden repeatedly claimed while in office that he had “spent more time with [Xi Jinping] than any world leader,” even saying he “traveled 17,000 miles with him in China and around the United States” when serving as Barack Obama’s vice president.

In November 2022, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler mockingly awarded Biden a “bottomless Pinocchio” rating for repeating the fabrication at least 20 times.

“There is no evidence Biden traveled that much with Xi, the president of China — and even if we added up the miles Biden flew to see Xi, it still did not total 17,000 miles,” Kessler wrote at the time –two days before the president repeated the claim yet again during a post-midterm elections press conference.

The aides’ jesting came at a time when the 46th president was starting to face concerns — both from Democrats in Congress and powerful party donors — over his age and slipping mental fitness.

“Aides saw how Biden’s mannerisms – digressing during his speeches, mixing up details, rambling — had been exacerbated by age and were perceived by voters,” the authors explain.

Those concerns had prompted the president’s closest aides to discuss in February of 2024 whether or not he should take a cognitive test in addition to his regular physical.

That same month, special counsel Robert Hur, who had been investigating Biden’s “willful” retention of classified documents, released a report characterizing Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Biden, huddled with House Democratic leaders at an event in Leesburg, Va., erupted after it emerged that Hur had revealed the president didn’t know the year his son Beau died of brain cancer.

“How the f— could I forget the day my son died?” he asked, according to the authors. “Of course I remember everything.”

At a press conference hours later, the president confused the names of the Mexican president at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

White House aides ultimately decided not to have Biden undergo a cognitive test but still feared it “could open the door to further questions,” the book notes.

Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the president’s personal physician, told The Post in a July interview weeks before Biden dropped out that his mental acuity was “excellent,” a claim similar to those made after delivering results of his annual physicals that stood in stark contrast to his verbal flubs and hard falls.

The House Oversight Committee, led by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), will depose O’Connor on Wednesday to answer questions about whether there was a cover-up of the president’s declining cognitive abilities while in office.