Hunter Biden pressed his father, then-President Joe Biden, to rest during a trip to Ireland in April 2023.
As the president was welcomed to his ancestral homeland, he set off on a busy schedule, including a tree-planting ceremony, the ringing of the Peace Bell, and an honor guard presenting arms, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson write in Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
The room Biden was in at one point during the trip grew empty, with fewer than a dozen people left. Two of them were Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley and then-New York Rep. Brian Higgins. Hunter Biden pushed his father to take a step back.
“You promised you wouldn’t do this,” he said, according to the authors. “You promised you’d take a nap. You know you can’t handle all this.”
Biden disregarded his son’s concerns and walked to the bar in the back of the room, where a woman handed him a soft drink. He appeared exhausted.
It was at that point that Quigley realized why the moment felt familiar. It reminded him of his father in his last few years before his death from Parkinson’s at the age of 92.
Biden and some Democrats alongside him reject that his deterioration occurred.
Earlier this month, Biden appeared onThe View, where co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin asked Biden about the “Democratic sources” who had said that “in your final year, there was a dramatic decline in your cognitive abilities. What is your response to these allegations, and are these sources wrong?”
“They are wrong. There’s nothing to sustain that,” he responded.
Although it wasn’t yet announced, Quigley questioned during the trip to Ireland how Biden could run for re-election.
While Biden got a boost from the crowds in Ireland, when they weren’t present, he grew deflated, the authors write.
Quigley believed at that moment that Biden needed to rest for the rest of the day and night. He was physically frail and had lost most of his energy. The authors describe his speech behind the scenes as breathless, soft, and weak. Quigley was frequently reminded of his dad during the trip.
The Illinois congressman spoke to Higgins about Biden appearing to have symptoms akin to Parkinson’s. However, Higgins viewed the president through a different lens, having lost his own father to Alzheimer’s and believing that he was seeing something similar in Biden’s shuffling.
“A diagnosis is nothing more than pattern recognition,” Higgins told Tapper and Thompson. “When people see that stuff, it conjures up a view that there’s something going on neurologically.”
He added that Biden’s cognitive decline “was evident to most people that watched him.”
Quigley wondered why the White House physician didn’t attempt to diagnose the president. However, he reasoned that Biden’s staff may not have wanted to know.
The president’s staff was elated at his 2024 State of the Union performance. Biden was surrounded by Democrats on the floor of the House following the speech. Quigley hadn’t been that close to Biden since the Ireland trip the previous year.
When he put his hand on Biden’s back, he could feel his ribs and spine. His voice soft and breathy, Biden’s eyes darted from side to side. Once again, Quigley was reminded of his late father.
Biden’s disastrous debate performance a few months later didn’t come as a huge shock to Quigley, the book reports.
“We have to be honest with ourselves that it wasn’t just a horrible night,” Quigley told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on July 2. A few days later, he became one of the first Democrats to call for the president to step back from the ticket.
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