There is an inside story of Biden's decline and an outside story of Biden's decline.

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We've gotten a new tidbit of information about efforts by the Biden White House and some in the press to cover up President Joe Biden's age-related infirmity. It comes from a new book, "2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America," by reporters Tyler Pager, Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, respectively. The authors report that "top White House aides debated having [Biden] undergo a cognitive test to prove his fitness for a second term but ultimately decided against the move," according to a report on the book in the New York Times.

The revelation is the latest in a series of news nuggets about the 82-year-old Biden's senescence – stories like White House aides putting tape on the floor so that Biden wouldn't wander off course – that have been included in new books about the 2024 election. More is promised in yet another book to be published later this month. But the fact is, you already knew about Biden's cognitive decline because you saw it with your own eyes.

There is an inside story of Biden's decline and an outside story of Biden's decline. The inside story is the effort by the White House staff, plus its Democratic allies, plus its supporters in the press, to conceal Biden's problem. The outside story is the many public appearances – moments of Biden appearing confused, lost or frozen – during which millions of Americans could see for themselves that the president had a serious problem.

Another way to put it would be to say that the inside story was the effort to deny that the outside story existed.

That was the strangest thing about the whole situation. Biden's decline happened in public. People knew about it. Opinion polls revealed that large numbers of Americans believed Biden was not up to the job of president, or at least not up to a second term in the White House. If it was a secret, it was the world's best-known secret. 

And yet those in the White House denied that there was a problem, and their allies outside the White House echoed those denials. And they went beyond simple denial. They also attacked those who said Biden had a problem. Remember "cheapfakes"? That was what Biden's defenders in the Democratic Party and the media called the clear video evidence of Biden's problem. 

When Biden drifted away from a group of leaders at the Normandy anniversary in France; when he appeared lost and had to be guided by former President Barack Obama at a Hollywood fundraiser; and when he froze at a Juneteenth event at the White House, the administration accused Republicans of manipulating videos of each moment. And many in the press went along with it, as if the GOP were the problem and not the White House effort to fool the public.

One example. On June 17, 2024, a reporter asked then-White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, "There seems to be a sort of rash of videos that have been edited to make the president appear especially frail or mentally confused. I'm wondering if the White House is especially worried about the fact that this appears to be a pattern that we're seeing more often?"

"Yeah," said Jean-Pierre. "And I think you all have called this the 'cheapfakes' video. And that's exactly what they are. They are cheapfakes video. They are done in bad faith. And some of your news organizations have been very clear, have stressed that the right-wing critics of the president have a credibility problem because the fact-checkers have repeatedly caught them pushing misinformation, disinformation." In just a few words, Jean-Pierre managed to give a pat on the head to those news organizations that displayed little curiosity about Biden's condition but real energy in denouncing those who did. 

And then, just 10 days after that exchange, Biden met Trump for the debate in Atlanta. It was no longer possible to hide the extent of Biden's senility. The inside story failed to suppress the outside story, and Biden was doomed as a candidate.

Now we're learning more about the lengths to which the Biden team and its many allies in politics and media went to conceal the truth. There is likely a lot more yet to discover.

Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.

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