A bombshell report that was published this week revealed how the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s mental decline was not only more substantial than first thought but went on for much longer than previous reports suggested.

According to The Wall Street Journal, aides to Biden colluded to prevent the public from knowing just how substantial his mental decline was, and that the effort to cover it up actually began during his 2020 presidential campaign and continues to this day.

“To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, [aides] told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent,” the WSJ reported. “Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.”

“Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president,” the outlet continued.

The report said senior staff instructed press aides tasked with compiling news clips for President Biden to omit negative stories about him. Meanwhile, the president avoided communicating with his own pollsters, even as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.

Presidents always have gatekeepers, but in Biden’s case, the controls were tighter, and the barriers around him higher, Democratic lawmakers, donors, and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations told the WSJ. Strict limits were placed on who could speak with him, what they could say, and the sources of information he accessed.

The report added that a small group of aides remained close to Biden throughout his presidency, particularly during travel or public appearances.

“They body him to such a high degree,” observed one person familiar with the dynamic, describing the “hand-holding” as unprecedented compared to what other recent presidents have experienced, said the outlet.

“This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations,” the WSJ reported.

According to party insiders, Hiding Biden’s diminished condition—especially after many observers began pointing it out as far back as his 2020 campaign—has left the Democratic Party mightily damaged, at least in the short to mid term.

Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said Thursday night that the Democratic Party could face a “tea party” movement after administration officials hid the president’s condition for years.

“There is a bigger problem here, and that is that I think Democrats are at the point where Republicans might have been right after the Bush election or after the Bush term was up, which is that I think Democrats are starting to mistrust their institutions,” Roginsky told a CNN panel. “And this goes back to a bipartisan effort to lie us into the Iraq war, not just by George Bush, but also by a lot of Democrats.”

“It has to do with the fact that Barack Obama did not hold anybody accountable after the 2008 crisis, which also happened on George Bush’s watch, but he became president, he never threw a hostage on the tarmac from Wall Street,” Roginsky continued.

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“You saw the rise of Bernie Sanders as a result of that, and you saw a lot of institutional Democrats, me included, saying, no, no, no, this is not the time. We have to stick with the institution,” she continued.

“I think you have a lot of Democrats now, me included, who are pretty sick of the institution and trusting people in the institution and this is just one example, the most recent example, I think of people institutionally lying to the American people and what you’re ultimately going to see,” Roginsky added.

“And I don’t have a problem saying this as a Democrat, is that you’re going to see a tea party version rise up in the Democratic Party based on the fact that this is yet another marker of people just not trusting our leaders anymore. And I’m sorry to say that, but I think we brought this on ourselves.”