Veteran Republican strategist Karl Rove on Monday ripped former President Biden’s allies accused of trying to cover up aspects of Biden’s health after it was revealed the former president has cancer and a new book details his condition inside the White House.
“They’re still gaslighting us,” Rove told Fox News “The Story” host Martha MacCallum. “The people around the president knew he was not up to the job.”
Biden, 82, announced through a statement from a family spokesman Sunday that he was diagnosed Friday with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bone.
Rove, who was a senior adviser to then-President George W. Bush, said he questions whether Biden had cancer while he was in office and, if so, why it wasn’t discovered then.
“We’ve now got another question that needs to be answered,” he said.
The news came as new books have detailed some doubts about Biden’s fitness for the presidency and the audio release from Biden’s 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur about his handling of classified documents. A transcript of the interview was released last year, but Biden’s administration wouldn’t make the audio public.
News outlet Axios published a leaked recording last week that showed Biden slowly struggling to answer questions and remember details and dates.
“I saw the comment by Biden’s spokesman — ‘The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public’ — that’s not true,” Rove told MacCallum. “You listen to that audio, as bad as the transcript is, the audio is worse — you can hear the clock ticking in the background as the president breaks up a sentence, as he thinks about what his next thought might be, or what is that next word in the sentence.”
“It is painful to listen to,” he added.
Biden and his allies have shot back at attempts to portray him as unfit to be president or run for a second term. He dropped out of the race against President Trump just months before Election Day last year at the urging of top Democratic leaders, including former President Obama, after his disastrous debate against Trump.
“I said when I got out of the race, I was still going to be president. I think I did a pretty damn good job the last six months,” Biden said during an appearance on “The View” earlier this month.
But Rove had a harsher assessment of what happened behind-the-scenes during the Biden administration.
“The people around the president knew he was not up to the job,” Rove said. “They disrespected our country, they demolished their party, and they ought to be ashamed of their behavior in trying to encourage him to run for reelection and not stand up and say to him, ‘Mr. President, with all due respect, it’s time for you to leave.'”
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