Former Obama aide and Pod Save America co-host Jon Lovett admitted on Jon Stewart’s The Weekly Show podcast that he had serious concerns about Joe Biden’s physical and mental decline but chose to stay silent because he “wanted him to f**king win.”
Speaking with Stewart and fellow co-host Jon Favreau, Lovett acknowledged that he deliberately held back his concerns, even as Biden’s condition became increasingly apparent to him.
“I remember feeling I want to talk about this as a huge liability. To talk about this is something Joe Biden can overcome, but I’m not going to go so far as to say, ‘I think Joe Biden must drop out. He is too old to be president,’” Lovett said. “A, because I didn’t know exactly what was going on behind the scenes, but B, if Joe Biden is the candidate, I want him to fu***ng win.”
Lovett, who often laments about the future of “democracy” on his podcast, explained that speaking up would have been advantageous for Biden’s political opponents.He claimed he kept his mouth shut to avoid “having the words we’re saying taken out of context and all of a sudden be part of the case against Joe Biden from the right — that would use any person criticizing Joe Biden from the left as a weapon against him.”
“So it was about being honest about Joe Biden’s age as a liability while knowing that if he is the nominee, I want to be clear that I thought it was important to make sure we did everything we could to reelect him,” Lovett added.
Lovett is the latest Democrat to admit having concerns about President Biden’s decline, following the release of Original Sin, a new book by Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson that details the alleged cover-up surrounding Biden’s health.
Lovett appears in Original Sin in an anecdote recounting an April 26, 2024, meeting at the White House with Biden, alongside his Pod Save America co-hosts Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer. According to the book, the group left the meeting “deeply disturbed,” describing the president’s remarks as rambling and “incoherent.”
