EXCLUSIVE: Tragic Details of Joe Biden's Dementia Spill Out As He Battles Cancer — With Claims He Couldn't Even Remember the Years He Served at White House
Joe Biden had trouble remembering milestone moments.
May 21 2025, Published 1:19 p.m. ET
Joe Biden's memory had "significant limitations" according to an explosive new look at the ex-president's mental health.
RadarOnline.com can reveal the former leader had trouble remembering such unforgettable milestones as what years he was in power and when his son died of cancer.
The former president and vice-president had trouble remembering when he was in power.
While Biden, 82, now battles his own cancer and questions about his physical health, he's also being bombarded with accusations about his mental capacities in the White House.
The bombshell new book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson recount a 2023 interview Biden gave with Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating the president's handling of classified records at the time.
Hur concluded after their talk that Biden was an "elderly man with a poor memory" – and the new biography attempts to back that up.
'Significant Limitations'
The concern came after an interview with Special Counsel Hur.
In one section of the book, the authors reveal Biden had "significant limitations" during the interview.
"Biden’s recorded conversations from that time were described as 'often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries,'" the journalists write.
"Flash forward to the fall of 2023, when Biden had his interviews with the special counsel’s office. Summing up their impressions, Hur concluded: 'Biden’s memory was worse.'
"Biden seemed to have difficulty grasping the fact that his vice presidency lasted from January 2009 until January 2017. Once, trying to understand a point in time in 2013, he asked, 'Well, if it was 2013—when did I stop being vice president?'
"'2017,' a White House lawyer reminded him. 'So I was vice president,' he said. 'So it must’ve come from vice president stuff. That’s all I can think of.'"
Memory Struggles
The interview is recounted in the new book 'Original Sin'.
Elsewhere during the interviews, Biden notably failed to recall when his son Beau died, a fact a White House lawyer had to remind him of.
The former president is heard in the audio, saying, "What was happening though was... What month did Beau die?"
He added, "Oh God, May 30th,", before being asked for the year, which was confirmed by his lawyer as 2015.
Biden can also be heard asking, "Am I making any sense to you?" indicating a clear struggle to articulate his thoughts coherently.
Biden Bites Back
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Biden aides slammed the report.
After Hur's report first came out, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, and Bob Bauer, Biden's personal counsel, fired back at some aspects – including attacks on the president's memory.
"We do not believe that the report's treatment of President Biden's memory is accurate or appropriate," Sauber and Bauer wrote. "The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events."
A spokesperson for the Biden administration further characterized Hur's assessment as a "politically motivated" attack.
Officials have pushed back against the narrative that the then-president was unfit for office, emphasizing his unique lifelong challenges with a speech impediment should not be conflated with cognitive decline.
