LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – When asked this week whether she noticed signs of former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline – now chronicled in Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s upcoming book “Original Sin” – Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer essentially shrugged and said she was too busy to notice.
Eyes on the voters, not the president?
That’s right – the woman who co-chaired Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign and conducted over 160 stops on a swing-state bus tour says she didn’t see any red flags because she was too focused on voter registration and campaign logistics.
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“I didn’t see the president frequently,” Whitmer told CNN’s Pamela Brown about not noticing any signs of Biden’s cognitive decline, “I can’t speak to that directly.”
That’s a curious admission from someone who, just days after Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate against Trump, rushed to his defense, declared him “in it to win it,” and stood by him after a governors-only Oval Office huddle on July 3.
Too busy for Biden’s decline or to show up for his campaign rally – but not too busy for the Kamala Harris campaign rollout.
But by July 12, while Biden campaigned in Detroit – her own backyard – Whitmer was conspicuously absent, reportedly attending to prior commitments to attend a financial summit in Idaho. Less than three weeks later, she was full-throttle on Team Kamala, joining Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro at a Harris rally on July 29.
So, to recap: Whitmer wasn’t around enough to see Biden’s decline – but somehow was around enough to campaign for him, defend him on national television, suggest (mildly) that a cognitive test might be helpful, and then quietly switch gears to support Harris after the wheels fell off the Biden campaign bus.
Too busy to notice or too careful to admit it?
The Tapper-Thompson book reportedly reveals that even cabinet members were raising alarms behind the scenes. But Whitmer, positioned as one of Biden’s top public surrogates, claims she was too busy registering voters to notice what most of America saw in a single debate.
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It’s a classic case of plausible deniability in her interview with CNN – or at least attempted. Whitmer’s carefully hedged answers offer her the wiggle room to say she wasn’t close enough to know what was going on – despite being one of the most visible leaders of his reelection effort.
If Whitmer is eyeing 2028, this verbal gymnastics routine may be her warm-up act. But voters may wonder: If she didn’t notice Biden’s mental decline, was she too disconnected – or too complicit? Either way, Michigan’s governor just made it clear: when the Biden campaign bus hit a cognitive pothole, she wasn’t anywhere near the driver’s seat. She was too busy handing out maps to the next candidate.
