Biden’s aides reveal they used fluorescent tape on floor to guide him at events so he wouldn’t get lost
WASHINGTON, DC: Behind the scenes of Joe Biden’s final months in office, things were way worse than the public ever knew.
According to bombshell revelations from upcoming books, the 81-year-old president was so out of it that his aides had to put fluorescent tape on the floor to guide him at events—laying down a path so he wouldn’t get lost.
One top aide even admitted that Biden seemed to think he was the “President of NATO” instead of the United States while prepping for his fateful debate with then-candidate Donald Trump.
The 'President of NATO' confusion
These shocking details are coming out in a wave of books set to hit shelves in the coming months, all chronicling Joe Biden’s decline and the behind-the-scenes panic among his staff.
In Chris Whipple’s 'Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History,' former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain dishes on the six grueling days at Camp David where staff tried (and failed) to get Biden debate-ready. The Guardian has shared excerpts.
Klain recounted: "We sat around the table. [Biden] had answers on cards, and he was just extremely exhausted. And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with NATO leaders."
Klain said Biden “became very enraptured with being the head of NATO,” to the point where Whipple wrote that he “wondered half-seriously if Biden thought he was president of NATO instead of the US.”
The fluorescent tape breadcrumbs
If the debate prep was bad, the actual debate on June 27, 2024, was catastrophic. Joe Biden showed up visibly exhausted and lost in his thoughts. The showdown in Atlanta was supposed to prove he was still sharp enough to lead the country—but it tanked his presidency instead.
After the disastrous debate, things got even more bizarre.
At a fundraiser at New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s house, aides reportedly laid out fluorescent tape on the floor so Biden would know where to walk—like "colorful bread crumbs [that] showed the leader of the free world where to walk."
One aide told Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes (authors of 'Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House'), "He knows to look for that."
According to Parnes, "Biden, at the fundraiser, had fluorescent tape on the floor to guide him where he needs to go."
What's more? Biden reportedly required a makeup artist every morning before meetings on foreign trips.
"On foreign trips, there's a makeup artist who comes in first thing in the morning to kind of liven him up and do his makeup ahead of these meetings. He wasn't doing television. He was going into meetings," she said.
At that same New Jersey fundraiser, Biden struggled to speak coherently—even with a teleprompter in front of him.
Debate prep
Behind closed doors at Camp David, the situation wasn’t any better.
Staff tried desperately to prepare Biden for the debate, but he was in rough shape. Whipple describes how Biden “didn't know what Trump had been saying and couldn't grasp what the back and forth was.” Even worse, he “didn't really understand what his argument was on inflation” and had “nothing to say about a second term other than finish the job.”
Biden’s foreign policy obsession was also a major distraction. At one point, he reassured himself by saying, "These guys say I'm doing a great job as president, so I must be a great president."
Even mock debates proved to be too much. The first session was supposed to last 90 minutes, but Klain cut it short at 45 minutes because “the president’s voice was shot and so was his grasp of the subject.”
By the second mock debate, Biden didn’t even make it that long. He threw in the towel just 25 minutes in. "I'm just too tired to continue and I'm afraid of losing my voice here and I feel bad. I just need some sleep. I'll be fine tomorrow."
Then, he went straight to bed. "The president was fatigued, befuddled, and disengaged," Whipple wrote. "Klain feared the debate with Trump would be a nationally televised disaster."
Democrats in panic mode
After the debate, the Biden team scrambled for damage control. Aides claimed he just had a cold and had a “bad night.” Some complained he was over-coached and needed more rest instead of endless rehearsals.
But behind the scenes, panic was setting in. Democrat leaders feared Biden wasn’t just losing the White House—he was dragging the entire party down with him. Publicly, they backed him. Privately, they knew the truth.
As Allen and Parnes put it: "Publicly, Democrats scoffed at Republican claims that Biden wasn't up to the job. But privately, some of them worried all along that they were putting too much stock in an old man who, at best, had long since lost his fastball."
Even a close friend of Biden and Obama admitted Biden’s decision to run again was “the original sin” of the 2024 election, blaming his family and closest aides for not convincing him to step aside, the Daily Mail reported.
Moment Joe Biden gave up
After weeks of mounting pressure—including behind-the-scenes nudging from Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi—Joe Biden finally bowed out on July 21.
And despite everything, Klain still thought Biden should have stayed in the race.
When his successor, Jeff Zients, called to tell him Biden was stepping down, Klain was stunned. "I think that's a mistake. I think this was an avoidable tragedy," he told Zients.
With Biden out, Kamala Harris took his place as the Democratic nominee—only to lose to Trump in November.
Whipple told Politico: "I happen to think that to call it a 'cover-up' is simplistic. I think it was stranger and way more troubling than that. Many of Biden's inner circle, his closest advisers, were in a fog of delusion and denial. They believed what they wanted to believe."
