How a make-up staff helped Biden cover his age from the general public – and a Harris aide had a method in place in case he died | EUROtoday

Former president Joe Biden commonly used make-up to cover his age, and Kamala Harris’s staff had a method in place in case he handed whereas in workplace, in accordance with a brand new guide written by two political journalists.

The revelations come from an excerpt of the upcoming guide Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White Housewritten by The Hill’s Amie Parnes and NBC News’s Jonathan Allen.

Biden commonly met with a make-up artist whereas touring and earlier than Zoom calls with aides to cowl up indicators of ageing, in accordance with the excerpts reviewed by The Hill. Biden constantly made these appointments, however generally canceled the briefings that have been meant to observe.

Harris’s aides additionally had contingency plans in place in case Biden died in workplace, Parnes and Allen wrote. This included a spreadsheet of Republican judges whom Donald Trump didn’t appoint. That means, if Harris wanted to be sworn in on quick discover, it might be carried out by a choose who isn’t in Trump’s camp however who Republicans would nonetheless see as credible.

Harris wasn’t conscious of this spreadsheet, in accordance with the excerpts reviewed by The Hill. However, the aide who put it collectively left in January 2023 and instructed his colleagues to contact him instantly if Biden handed as a result of he had a method ready.

“It shows what we had to do to prepare with the unique circumstances we had, which was an eighty-plus-year-old president who was running,” one Democratic official advised Parnes and Allen, in accordance with The Hill.

The Independent has contacted Biden and Harris’ places of work for remark.

Concerns about Biden’s age — he was 82 when he left workplace — ramped up as his re-election marketing campaign acquired off the bottom in 2023. Worries about his means to serve peaked after his disastrous debate efficiency in opposition to Trump in June 2024.

Following the talk, Democrats referred to as on Biden to step down and go the baton to a youthful candidate. Less than a month later, Biden bowed out of the race and endorsed Harris.

Harris would go on to lose the presidency to Trump, incomes simply 226 electoral votes to his 312.

“Publicly, Democrats scoffed at Republican claims that Biden wasn’t up to the job,” Parnes and Allen wrote. “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.”