It’s no secret that Americans want a presidential administration that is completely transparent with its citizens. After all, the president was elected by the people for the people, so it makes sense that they should be straightforward, open and honest with Americans. But as we know, that hasn’t always been the case.

Many modern day presidential administrations have been caught up in the political machine that is the federal government, and in turn they’ve decided be secretive about various things they do in the executive branch. Of course, not everything needs to be spilled out to the American public, such as top secret info relating to matters of national secretary or national defense. But for the most part, a presidential administration should be pretty transparent.

Transparency was not a phrase that could be used for the Biden administration however. They did promise to be that way when they first entered the White House, but that’s not how things played out. During President Joe Biden’s term, there were clear signs that he was suffering from cognitive decline. Americans could easily see it, and their concerns hit a boiling point during last year’s presidential debate between Biden and Donald Trump.

But despite these obvious signs, Biden administration officials claimed that the president was completely fine and that any concerns were simply an overreaction. Now, however, a top aide for the former president has come out to admit that a “gaslighting” operation was being done in order to convince Americans that the oldest president ever was completely fine mentally and physically. This certainly wasn’t the transparency that was promised when Biden entered the White House.

A Former Biden Aide Confesses: The White House Knew Age Was a Problem All Along

In a startling revelation, a senior aide from President Joe Biden’s administration has come clean about a tactic that left many Americans questioning what they were being told. Michael LaRosa, who once served as a White House aide and press secretary for First Lady Jill Biden, confessed that the administration was fully aware of the public’s growing unease about the president’s age and capabilities—yet chose to brush it aside. According to a report from Puck, LaRosa admitted that Biden’s team was “gaslighting” the nation, a term he didn’t shy away from using to describe the campaign’s efforts to downplay the issue.

Speaking at a seminar hosted by the Science Institute at American University on Wednesday, LaRosa pulled back the curtain on a campaign that knew from “day one” that Biden’s age — at 81, the oldest president in U.S. history — was a glaring liability. “Cover-up to me is a little hard, a little harsh. Every politician, everybody, every human being tries to cover up age. We were always, from day one, cognizant that age was an issue,” he said. But awareness didn’t translate to transparency. Instead, LaRosa revealed that aides were “scared to death” of letting Biden face unscripted moments, especially in the run-up to the election. The fear? That the president, left to his own devices, might falter in ways they couldn’t control.

“There are some things that are true, I mean, like the gaslighting. There was a lot of denial of the polling. And I will use the term gaslighting because that’s what they were doing, the campaign, former colleagues. The message to everybody was to make sure that you tell people it’s too early,” LaRosa explained. It was a deliberate strategy: convince the public—and perhaps themselves—that concerns were premature, even as polls painted a grim picture.

Throughout the campaign, Biden faced relentless scrutiny. Verbal slip-ups, moments of apparent confusion, and physical missteps fueled widespread speculation about his health and mental sharpness. Poll after poll reflected a public increasingly skeptical of his fitness to lead, yet the White House stuck to its line: Biden was fine, fit, and ready to serve.

Behind closed doors, however, the reality was starkly different. “The president’s team was scared to death of impromptu, unscripted, un-rehearsed, unpracticed, un-choreographed, anything, they couldn’t compete for the attention economy,” LaRosa admitted. The campaign, he said, lacked both the strategy and the confidence in their candidate to let him shine—or even stumble—on his own terms.

Biden, LaRosa noted, was eager to engage. “He loves TV. He loves doing stuff,” the former aide said. But his inner circle didn’t trust him to navigate the spotlight without a safety net. “It was the orbit that did not trust their own candidate,” he added. That lack of faith proved costly. “Biden needed the press. When he needed them the most, they didn’t trust him, they gave him the back foot of the doubt and they put their foot on the gas and never took it off. And he was politically dead.”

The pressure became unbearable. With polls tanking and questions about his mental decline mounting, Biden bowed out of the 2024 race, throwing his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. LaRosa’s candid remarks came during a conversation with Puck journalist Tara Palmeri, who pressed him on a new book co-authored by CNN’s Jake Tapper. The book alleges that Biden’s administration and allies went to great lengths to hide his struggles—a claim LaRosa didn’t entirely dispute, though he softened the accusation of a full-blown “cover-up.”

Ironically, Tapper himself has faced blowback online. During the campaign, the CNN anchor often waved off concerns about Biden’s age—only to later co-write a book exposing the very issue he’d downplayed. For LaRosa, though, the story isn’t about pointing fingers. It’s a rare glimpse into a campaign that was wrestling with an uncomfortable truth: they knew the clock was ticking, but they couldn’t stop it – even though they tried through their gaslighting efforts.

Did you see through the gaslighting efforts by the Biden administration at the time? Let us know in the comments below!