Who's really running the show? Following President Joe Biden's abysmal performance at Thursday's debate, press coverage has sought to investigate how exactly Biden's cognitive decline got this bad without it becoming a major scandal earlier. The story Politico has offered: Biden's public appearances are so tightly controlled by his shrinking inner circle, which has been running interference for him as his mind atrophies.
"The number of people who have access to the president has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. They've been digging deeper into the bunker for months now," a Democratic strategist in a critical battleground state told Politico. Some of those people include senior adviser Anita Dunn (who advocated for the early debate, in a break with tradition) and Ron Klain, Biden's former chief of staff who handled the debate prep, as well as Bob Bauer, Dunn's husband and Biden's personal lawyer.
