Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said he’s known about President Joe Biden’s withering mental state for some time, mentioning a “wild tour” Biden once supposedly took him on.
“So when he became president and I was minority leader, he kind of shut us out from even communication and I thought that was odd. But then when we won the majority and I went down before our speaker, I soon learned the reason why,” McCarthy said in a Thursday interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, highlighting what he feels is Biden’s inability to negotiate without written cues.
“He has to speak from cards, and when he speaks from cards and you want to debate what he said from the card to negotiate, he can’t go there,” McCarthy explained. “He shuts up the conversation.”
McCarthy’s remarks about Biden were in response to questions about the comments the GOP leader made in the Wall Street Journal article, “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping,” related to Biden’s current mental state.
“I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house. He’s not the same person,” McCarthy said in June.
During his chat with Raju, McCarthy shared what he’s witnessed from Biden in previous years, detailing one instance in which he says First Lady Jill Biden had to stop her husband from taking him to the White House swimming pool during the winter.
“I saw a real decline early on; and with each meeting I would have with him, it’s almost I saw a different Joe Biden. I remember one time being down there where I didn’t think he quite knew what was transpiring and he took us on a wild tour down to the swimming pool that made no sense in wintertime. And I remember Jill being on the other side of the table saying, ‘No, no, they don’t want to go outside.’”
On another occasion, McCarthy said Biden inappropriately undressed while showing him a private room in the White House.
“Then he took us into, he’s created this little office, just outside, just down from the Oval Office, that’s his little private office,” McCarthy said. “He walked us into — and there’s only a few people can fit in it; Trump had it as a gift shop-type thing. In there, he has a valet with a blue dress shirt all wrinkled sitting there. I’m thinking, ‘Why is he taking his shirt off in here?’ It just, every time I walked out actually depressed as an American. I didn’t tell anybody about that story because he was going off to a G7 meeting.”
When questioned about whether he should have addressed the president’s mental wellbeing publicly at the time, McCarthy said he is open to doing so now.
“This was before I was even speaker, so I’m thinking, I didn’t have new interactions. I have started being public, as you saw, probably the first one out and I was criticized many times about it,” McCarthy said. “What I learned is, when he would meet with me, he would always talk from a card. And I learned from a negotiation tactic to disrupt him and he couldn’t carry on.”
What started as jabs from Donald Trump calling Biden “Sleepy Joe” has seemingly turned into an all-out movement over Biden’s age and ability to serve as the president of the United States for a second term. Conversations around Biden being replaced by a stronger Democratic suitor started up after his poor performance at the first presidential debate of election season on June 27. Since then, longtime supporters and fellow Dems have begun shifting gears against him.
Biden and Trump’s second debate is set to take place on Sept. 10 with ABC News.
