Former President Biden on Thursday denied accusations that his mental acuity took a slide toward the end of his presidency and called reporting that he was urged to drop out of the race over those concerns unfounded.
“They are wrong, there is nothing to sustain that,” Biden said during an appearance on ABC’s “The View,” knocking what he called President Trump’s “incompetence” in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic before he took office in 2020.
“I only dropped out because I didn’t want to have a divided Democratic Party,” he later said.
Former first lady Jill Biden, who joined the former president during Thursday’s live interview, said of the reporting on concerns around Biden’s mental capacity that “the people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us.”
“They didn’t see how hard Joe worked,” she added.
Biden’s mental state, and press coverage of it at the time, has been a hot topic in media and political circles in recent weeks.
Trump’s White House has accused mainstream media outlets of turning a blind eye to Biden’s decline, while some Washington journalists have argued many in the industry “missed” that story.
But the Bidens on Thursday sought to dismiss those concerns.
“If you look at things today,” Jill Biden said, alluding to the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, “give me Joe Biden anytime.”
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