As ailing Joe Biden‘s term comes to end, many in Washington agree that it has been hard to tell who was actually in charge of running the country over the last four years.
Biden, 82, leaned on a close circle of unelected advisers and officials who had been put into roles usually occupied by the president, it has emerged.
Throughout his presidency, the White House carried out an extensive, deliberate and years-long cover-up in an attempt to hide his rapidly diminishing mental condition, a new bombshell investigation by The Wall Street Journal has exposed.
A well-connected Democratic strategist confirmed to DailyMail.com that influence over Biden had been ‘concentrated by people who are not external facing,’ including his close advisors Bruce Reed, Steve Ricchetti, and Mike Donilon.
He was also shielded by senior advisers who were put into roles that others felt the president should have occupied. The officials who stood in included Ricchetti, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard.
Biden’s lower-level staff have long griped that this secretive ‘triumvirate’ – also known as the ‘Biden whisperers’ – developed an outsized influence over America’s oldest ever president.
It was also revealed that his team hired a vocal coach, scrapped meetings on his ‘bad days’, and kept him at arm’s length from his own Cabinet members.
The Administration would also gaslight those who dared to claim Biden’s abilities had deteriorated since he was Barack Obama‘s vice president.