America


Inside Biden’s Secret ‘Politburo’


5 top aides took all the key decisions when president was having senior moments, says new book.


T BY LARRY BELL


he book original sin, written by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios political correspondent


Alex Thompson, reveals not only an excruciatingly elaborate cover- up of an often cognitively absent president, but also identifies elite members and affiliates of an inter- nally recognized “Politburo” that headed the country and free world during his extended periods of lead- ership absence. That group of nonelected broad-


ly unknown decision-makers for all of us was very small, yet influential in shaping Joe Biden’s policies and determining what vital information did and didn’t reach his desk. It wasn’t as if his dismal chanc-


es of winning reelection weren’t broadly and desperately recog- nized by his party, with his age and failing cognitive state featured front and center. As an unnamed longtime Biden


aide reportedly said: “He just had to win. And then he could disappear for four more years — he’d only have to show proof of life once in a while. When you vote for some- body, you are voting for the people around them too.” As the authors observed,


“[Biden’s] gaffe-prone reputation meant it was harder for people to figure out if Biden was having senior moments — not just for staffers and reporters, but for world leaders.” They noted that his speechwrit-


ers did their best to compensate for his “diminished capabilities.” At limited press conferences,


16 NEWSMAX | JULY 2025


Biden knew the answers only so long as he could read them off a note card someone prepared for him. He had trouble taping even mundane video remarks without flubbing lines, so they typically limited them to two minutes or less. They made his speeches, even the paragraphs and sentenc- es, shorter. Special Counsel Robert Hur’s


Biden interviews — which began on Sept. 2, 2022, just a few days before midterm elections — regarding illegal classified docu- ments found on his properties, were described as alarmingly ram- bling and incoherent. While concluding that Presi-


dent Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified documents after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” the report found that “no criminal charg- es are warranted in this matter because a jury would see Biden as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” including an inability to remem- ber “even within several years when his son Beau died.” Biden’s disastrous public


debate performance against Don- ald Trump finally shocked the nation and world to imagine him as the guy who controls nuclear codes. As uber-liberal former MSNBC


anchor Joy Reid observed, “The universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic.” After the debate, first lady Jill Biden grabbed a microphone from


They Covered for


the Boss Mike Donilon, the


key Politburo member, essentially served as President Joe Biden’s influential political director, before leaving the White House in early 2024 to work for his reelection campaign at a princely salary of about $4 million. Steve Ricchetti, a former


lobbyist at the Clinton White House and Vice President Biden’s chief of staff, was good at fostering relationships with Capitol Hill and therefore controlled presidential legislative affairs. Bruce Reed, a former


speechwriter for Al Gore and top policy aide for Bill Clinton, undertook the same role for President Biden. Ron Klain was Biden’s


first vice presidential chief of staff after working for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, when Biden was still thinking about running. He wanted to “became one of the most powerful chiefs of staff in modern history” and did a little bit of everything in the Politburo. Anthony Bernal, a top


aide to Jill Biden, carried lots of clout in assuring that staff at all levels were entirely loyal to Joe and policed any talk challenging his mental acuity.


BERNAL REED DONILON


RICCHETTI


KLAIN


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