Joe Biden, 82, hired a publicist who previously helped cover up former defense secretary Lloyd Austin’s secret hospitalization to defend him against allegations of senility.
The former president’s team tapped Biden administration spokesman Chris Meagher to “help [Biden] transition past the first 100 days of the Trump administration,” Politico reported on Thursday.
The hire comes amid a flurry of high-profile books detailing Biden’s age-related cognitive decline and his family’s, the White House’s, and the media’s attempts to keep his mental state quiet during his reelection run. Biden allies also fear that soon-to-be-released audio of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur, who said the former president came across as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” could “further damage his legacy,” according to Politico.
Meagher’s history of covering up damaging health-related stories about Democrats makes him a natural choice to represent Biden. He was part of a small group of Department of Defense aides who helped conceal Austin’s 2024 hospitalization following prostate cancer surgery.
Meagher, a Pentagon spokesman at the time, was one of four aides who knew the defense secretary was indisposed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center from complications after his emergency surgery but hid the news from the White House for two days.
Austin’s two-week hospital stint drew criticism from the public and national security experts who questioned whether he had properly delegated his authority—and whether anyone was running the Pentagon after an ambulance rushed him to Walter Reed.
Meagher has jumped into his new job as Biden’s spin doctor. According to Politico, the former Pentagon spokesman “played an instrumental role” in booking Biden’s first live post-presidential interview on Thursday, a softball appearance on The View alongside his wife and handler, Jill.
Meagher had already begun using social media to swat down stories about his boss’s senility even before his new role came to light. When Axios‘s Alex Thompson won the White House Correspondents’ Association’s highest award for his reporting on Biden’s exit from the 2024 presidential race, he used his speech to discuss the Biden administration’s “deception” and admitted that the media “missed a lot of this story.”
Meagher took to X to accuse Thompson of lying.
Not a great look hawking a book based on a false premise while accepting an award based on the same false premise.
Yes, Biden was old, but that’s a lot different than an allegation of mental decline that kept him from being able to do the job, which there is no evidence of. https://t.co/REWG2t0rdx
— Chris Meagher (@chrismeagher) April 27, 2025
Biden’s cognitive decline became apparent to many Americans early on in his presidency; he repeatedly forgot the names of his cabinet members, lost his train of thought during speeches, had to use a teleprompter for off-the-cuff appearances, and started walking with a stiff-armed, shuffling gait.
“It is a complete difference from what he was in 2017,” Biden’s former White House stenographer Mike McCormick, who worked with him during his vice presidency, told the Washington Free Beacon in 2020. “He’s lost a step and he doesn’t seem to have the same mental acuity as he did four years ago.”
Despite the obvious changes in Biden’s communication abilities, many mainstream journalists attributed his trouble speaking to a childhood speech impediment and dismissed videos of his stumbles as “cheap fakes.”
When Hur issued his report, former vice president Kamala Harris slammed the findings as “gratuitous, inaccurate, and inappropriate,” suggesting the special council lacked “integrity” and was “clearly politically motivated.”
During Biden’s reelection campaign, Democrats and administration officials redoubled their defense, claiming Biden was “very sharp,” “intensely probing and detail-oriented” and “always on the ball.”
Biden’s disastrous debate performance against President Donald Trump made his cognitive decline impossible to ignore, leading Democrats to replace him on the party’s ticket with Harris.
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