Former White House press sec Jen Psaki claims there was no ‘cover up’ of Biden’s mental decline

"I left in May of 2022, just for the facts here, and I have seen Biden once since then, when I took my daughter to the holiday party this last December, after he had lost. So I hadn't seen him in person during that period of time. I never saw that person," she said, referencing the June 27, 2024, debate between Biden and President Donald Trump in which Biden's severely declined mental capacity became apparent to everyone watching. "Not a single time, and I was in the Oval Office every day, that was on that debate stage."

"I'm not a doctor," she went on. "Aging happens quite quickly. Were things that people saw during that period of time that were similar to that, or would have been in a category of that, I don't know, possibly right? And all these books are going to tell us."

"Do you think that they were, were they actively covering it up? Were they sort of in denial, or was it, or is it, or was that just a bad debate, like, what is your read on that?" She was asked.

"Well, this is what I mean about cover-up is a very loaded term, I think," she said. Psaki emphasized that the term "cover-up" would indicate that there had been a crime, and she did not believe that this had been the case. "People use that term," she said, "as they relate to Watergate, or the covering up of not sharing public information about a war and I'm not accusing anybody of a crime I understand but other people have used that term and I think it's a bit of a dangerous term."

White House press secretary with the Trump administration, Karoline Leavitt, stated that the Biden administration did engage in a "cover-up" over Biden's mental health.

"I can tell you there was certainly a lack of transparency from the former president, from the entire former administration," Leavitt said during Trump's first 100 days week. "And frankly, a lot of people in this room, when it came to the health in the competence of the former President of the United States, Joe Biden — there was one of the greatest cover-ups and, frankly, political scandals this nation has ever seen. It's been unraveled in some recent books that are being written by journalists who engaged in that cover-up in scandal, which is quite ironic."

By June 2021, calls for Biden to be tested for dementia began. Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson demanded that Biden have a cognitive test to rule out dementia. "He’s not physically or cognitively fit to be our president right now," Jackson told Sean Hannity.

In October 2021, Psaki was asked by a reporter in the press briefing room about Biden's exercise regimen and said that he was so sprightly that she had trouble keeping up with him. "I can tell you, having traveled with him a fair amount, sometimes he's hard to keep up with," she said at the time.

This followed an incident where Biden had fallen up the stairs on Air Force One. Then-White House communications director Kate Bedingfield addressed that at the time, saying, "I know folks have seen that President Biden slipped on his way up the stairs to AF1, but I’m happy to report that he is just fine and did not even require any attention from the medical team who travels with him. Nothing more than a misstep on the stairs."

Throughout Biden's administration, reporters asked for him to give a press conference to answer reporters' questions. Psaki claimed that Biden was providing transparency, but she was accused of being "dishonest." By the end of Biden's first 100 days, reporters were demanding access to the president, and it was not given.

By October 2021, Psaki was being asked repeatedly about Biden's health and promised that he would undergo a physical and release the results to the public. That resounding slew of requests came after Biden appeared to be suffering from respiratory distress during a speech.

A poll at the time found that 48 percent of Americans disagreed with the statement "Joe Biden is mentally fit."