Former CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza expressed remorse Thursday for failing to properly investigate President Joe Biden’s mental and physical health during his tenure at the network. Cillizza’s comments come as new revelations emerge about the Biden administration’s alleged efforts to conceal the president’s declining condition.
Cillizza admitted that his coverage of Biden during the president’s first term fell short. Speaking openly on X (formerly Twitter), he detailed how he had brushed aside concerns about Biden’s mental acuity, particularly as Republicans and voters raised questions leading up to the 2020 election and beyond.
“As a reporter, I have a confession to make,” Cillizza said. “I should have pushed harder, earlier, for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline. So let me explain. Joe Biden was president from 2020 to 2024. I worked at CNN, 2020 to 2022. People would regularly—Republicans would regularly ping me and say, ‘Why don’t you ask more questions of Joe Biden and how he’s doing?’ He’s 76, 77, 78 years old. And I would sort of brush them off.”
Cillizza went on to say that after his departure from CNN in 2022, he began to view Biden’s age and fitness for office with greater scrutiny. “Once I left CNN, and once it became a little bit more clear to me about Biden’s age, I think I did write pretty regularly and talk pretty regularly about how I wasn’t sure that this guy was up to it,” Cillizza said.
Biden’s disastrous June 2024 debate performance against then-former President Donald Trump only intensified public concerns, prompting even media allies to acknowledge what many voters had already suspected. “Obviously, after the June 27th debate, everybody, including me, was writing and talking about it,” Cillizza concluded.
Critics were quick to respond to Cillizza’s comments, calling the admission “too little, too late.” Meghan McCain, former co-host of The View and daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, took aim at Cillizza in a scathing social media post.
“When I say this is too little too late, I mean this is absolutely pathetically too little too late,” McCain wrote. “There was no bigger and more obsessive ‘McCain truther’ regarding my dad’s age when he ran in 2008 (when he was 71, mind you) than Chris. He ignored Biden because he’s a hack.”
Delusions of Adequacy 