The History of Democrats Hiding Presidential Disabilities

According to journalist Carl Bernstein, several people “very close” to President Biden have related that the president has had 15-to-20 episodes of cognitive decline — similar to what happened during the presidential debate the other evening — during the past year and a half. Bernstein told CNN that these Biden supporters said, “There have been numerous instances where the president has lost his train of thought, can’t pick it up again.” The New York Post editorialized that Democrats and their “media enablers” have attempted to hide Biden’s cognitive decline. The Daily Mail reports that “current and former aides” to the president are saying that Biden’s cognitive decline has been known for months. National Review calls the “cover-up of Biden’s mental decline” a scandal. And recall that the special counsel’s report about the mishandling of classified documents by the president described Biden’s memory as “hazy,” “fuzzy,” “faulty,” and “poor.” Axios reports that top aides to the president have “carefully shielded him from people inside and outside the White House since the beginning of his presidency,” noting that first Lady Jill Biden was especially “protective” of the president. Fox News reports that there is growing anger among some Democrats at Jill Biden and White House staffers who they claim have “concealed” the president’s mental decline.

History shows that on at least three other occasions, top White House staffers and family members have engaged in massive cover-ups of Democratic Presidents’ disabilities. Those three disabled and/or very ill presidents were Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.

On Sept. 25, 1919, during Wilson’s campaign for ratification of the Versailles Treaty and America’s participation in the League of Nations, the president suffered a “mini-stroke” in Pueblo, Colorado. This caused the White House to cancel the rest of Wilson’s speaking tour, but the president’s private secretary told the press that Wilson was suffering from “digestive problems.” The “mini-stroke,” which caused partial facial paralysis, was hidden from the press and the public. About a week later, Wilson suffered a major stroke which caused greater paralysis. Edith Wilson, the president’s wife, embarked on what Dr. Howard Markel called a “bedside government,” where in essence the unelected Mrs. Wilson “became de-facto president.” Paul Johnson in Modern Times claimed that Wilson suffered his first stroke in April 1919 in Paris, and this was concealed. After the two later strokes in September and October 1919, Wilson’s physician said, “He is permanently ill physically, is gradually weakening mentally, and can’t recover.” Johnson wrote that Joseph Tumulty, the president’s private secretary, and Wilson and his wife Edith “conspired” to effectively make Edith Wilson the nation’s chief executive. Mrs. Wilson even stage-managed very brief meetings with Wilson and senators to conceal the extent of his disability. And all of this was hidden from the American people. There were times, Johnson wrote, when the president “could concentrate for [only] five or ten minutes at a time.” Thus at a crucial time in international affairs when the postwar structure of power was emerging from the ashes of the First World War, a seriously disabled president was unable and unfit to discharge his duties. 

During the latter years of the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt was declining physically and mentally. As early as March 1944, physicians concluded that FDR was suffering from hypertension, heart disease, cardiac failure, and acute bronchitis. As the postwar international structure of power was being decided by the “big three” (FDR, Churchill, and Stalin), one of the big three’s health “was deteriorating rapidly.” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, according to biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, “was reluctant to admit even to herself that Franklin was really sick.” In reality, writes one scholar, “Roosevelt had been gravely ill for the final five years of his presidency.” But, “with the cooperation of [personal physician Dr. Ross] McIntire and his other advisers, Roosevelt was able to conceal from the American people the truth about his health.” FDR’s ailments “weakened him mentally as well as physically and affected his ability to make decisions.” By the time of the 1944 presidential election, FDR was dying. Very few close to him thought he would be able to complete a fourth term in office, which is why Democratic Party leaders replaced the pro-Soviet Henry Wallace with Harry Truman on the Democratic ticket that year. FDR’s health problems were concealed from the public and he won election to a fourth term. He would live for four more months. These were four crucial months that included the infamous Yalta Conference, where FDR made concessions to the Soviet Union that set the stage for the Cold War. 

Others who were at Yalta dubbed FDR the “sick old man of Yalta.” The British Foreign Office’s Alexander Cadogan later said that FDR was “unaware of what was going on most of the time.” Assistant to the president James Byrnes scolded Roosevelt for making “little preparation” for the important meetings. Newsreel footage after Roosevelt returned to the U.S. from Yalta show him appearing ghost-like. Winston Churchill’s physician noted that FDR “looked old and thin and drawn … he sat looking straight ahead with his mouth open, as if he were not taking things in.” Vice-President elect Harry Truman, when he saw FDR after Yalta, remarked that “he seemed a spent man.” FDR’s serious health problems, including melanoma that eventually spread to the brain and killed him, and the cover-up that accompanied them are discussed at length, in FDR’s Dealdy Secret by Eric Fettmann and Steeven Lomazow. These health problems included “frequent episodic lapses of consciousness,” possibly caused by brain hemorrhages. As with Wilson’s debilitating illness, the American public knew nothing of this.

Nearly 20 years later, a young, supposedly vibrant John F. Kennedy entered the White House with serious ailments that would eventually have him taking 12 different medications at once. Kennedy suffered from spinal problems, osteoporosis, and Addison’s disease, which caused “fatigue, digestive difficulties and low blood pressure.” He used demoral, methadone, barbituates, amphetamines, thyroid hormones, anti-anxiety medications, and gamma globulins. The physician who secretly supplied Kennedy with these drugs was Max Jacobson, who the Kennedys called “Dr. Feelgood.” Kennedy and his aides and family went to great lengths to conceal all of this from the American public. Kennedy was told by his orthopedic surgeon in 1962 that “No president with his finger on the red button has any business taking stuff like that.” 

So much for the “public’s right to know.”  

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