19 December 2024, The Jerusalem Press – In the beginning of the current administration’s tenure, Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, had regular access to U.S. President Joe Biden. But over the past two years, that “close relationship” grew “more distant,” according to an in-depth report in the Wall Street Journal.

“During the first half of the administration, Austin was one of the cabinet members who would regularly attend Biden’s presidential daily briefing on a rotational basis each week,” per the Journal report with a quadripartite byline. “That briefing would be followed with a routine one-on-one in which Austin and Biden would meet personally behind closed doors.”

Officials, with knowledge of those meetings, told the Journal that the one-on-one meetings “helped cabinet members to understand the commander in chief’s intentions directly, instead of being filtered through others,” such as Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security advisor.

In the last two years, “a period when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza demanded the president’s attention,” Austin was rarely invited for scheduled briefings, according to the Journal report.

“When the one-on-one meetings did take place, they were more typically virtual meetings, not in-person,” it added. “Still, Austin could always get an unscheduled meeting with the president if he needed it.”

The Journal article describes a president much more isolated and reliant on an inner circle of advisers than most. That close-knit group also insulated Biden from negative press coverage, and when meetings were placed on the president’s schedule, they were kept terse and later in the day, to avoid Biden’s gaffes and loss of energy, it reports.

A former aide told the Journal that a meeting with Biden was to be rescheduled, because “he has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day, so we’re going to address this tomorrow.”

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who was then chair of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Journal that he sought to warn Biden about what he thought would be a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

“I was begging them to set expectations low,” Smith told the Journal. “He sought to talk to Biden directly to share his insights about the region but couldn’t get on the phone with him, Smith said.”

When Smith told the Washington Post—after the withdrawal, “which left 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghans dead”—that the Biden administration lacked a “clear-eyed view” about the government that Washington backed in the country, he received “an angry phone call from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who ended up getting an earful from the frustrated chairman,” per the Journal.

“Shortly after, Smith got an apologetic call from Biden,” per the report. “It was the only phone call Biden made to Smith in his four years in office, Smith said.”

“The Biden White House was more insulated than most,” the congressman told the paper. “I spoke with Barack Obama on a number of occasions when he was president and I wasn’t even chairman of the committee.”

“The cover up of Biden’s decline by Democrats and the media is a scandal,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wrote on social media. “They knew they were lying the whole time.”

The Journal report “confirms what many long suspected or assumed: there was no president for these last four years,” wrote Peter Hasson, a Washington Free Beacon editor. “There was a president-by-committee.”