The White House aides who covered President Joe Biden‘s cognitive decline from the world and waged war on the press for three-and-a-half years are now facing accusations of incompetence.

The staff closest to the ailing 81-year-old have deployed a multitude of tactics to hide his deficiencies – such as limiting his access to reporters, giving him smaller stairs for Air Force One, and surrounding him to hide his stiff walk.

He has been given notecards for almost every event, given a tighter schedule so he can get more sleep, and has been the center of strategy to avoid falling over.

Now, a former Biden aide has stated that the advisers who coordinated Joe’s protective cocoon are to blame for the surge in calls for him to drop out. They are part of a “gatekeeping” plot and a “calculated” plan to avoid any “authentic interaction” where Biden could potentially slip up.

The ex-senior staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the “guardrails” placed around Biden amplified his meandering and mumbling debate performance for the more than 50 million viewers.

Certain parts of the media have highlighted the commander-in-chief’s falls and gaffes, but others simply ignored them before his primetime car crash on CNN.

“I always thought that it was the people around him that were going to be his downfall,” they stated.

They say Biden’s inner circle “Carpet-bombed his relationships with the media that he built over 40 years by waging an unnecessary war of choice with an entire industry that shapes public perception.”

“It was the war that they waged, it was the access that they limited, it was the opportunities they turned down, it was the gatekeeping and hiding him from authentic interaction – all those things that were calculated by his team are his downfall,” the ex-aide continued.

“The problem is when you hide him, or when you limit his ability to engage and communicate, people are not conditioned to seeing him,” the source said. “So his mistakes and his age are amplified.”

“And even if they’re common, normal, verbal gaffes or slip-ups, like confusing two different presidents’ names, those common mistakes are going to be put on blast by the media because he’s so infrequently engaging in unscripted ways.”

The source said Biden could have survived the debate fallout if the White House had done two things: “Goodwill and credibility with the press corps.”

The West Wing has deployed multiple strategies to explain any of Biden’s missteps and has been accused of doing everything it can to cover up his decline.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday said the Democrats and aides involved are part of the “biggest political cover-up that we have ever seen.” The White House ploys have begun to undermine their arguments that Biden is fit to serve a second term.

Author Chris Whipple, who wrote a biography on Biden in 2022, called this White House the “most scripted in history.”

Biden has hosted a historically low number of press conferences and given very few interviews. When he speaks, he relies heavily on a teleprompter and rarely takes questions. His press aides are extraordinarily defensive and attack reports questioning his health or showing the president “freezing” or in an awkward encounter.

In the last week, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been hammered by the media for ducking questions about a Parkinson’s expert visiting the White House eight times in eight months. Jean-Pierre, known for her non-answers and reliance on her binder, has been creative with her excuses for Biden’s conduct.

In June, when several videos showed what appeared to be the president “freezing,” Jean-Pierre dubbed them “cheap fakes” and pushed that they were deceptively edited.

In one case, it’s clear that Biden is engaging with a paratrooper off-screen – in a viral video from the G7 in Italy – but in others, the president does appear to be spaced out – first at a Juneteenth concert and then at a fundraiser where former President Barack Obama leads him offstage.

However, Jean-Pierre has also refused to answer direct questions when the president has been guilty of a gaffe.

When Biden called Japan “xenophobic” – lopping the top ally in with Russia and China – Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say what exactly happened. She acted similarly when reporters tried to understand why Biden asked, in September 2022, ‘Where’s Jackie?’ at a nutrition event. He was looking around the room for Rep. Jackie Walorski, who had died in a car accident the month before.

Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say whether it was a malfunctioning teleprompter or if the president had forgotten the congresswoman was no longer alive.

The press secretary insisted Walorski was “at top of mind.”

Since Biden’s disastrous debate performance, more details about how White House aides schedule his day have leaked. Most of Biden’s events are scheduled between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. because that is when Biden is “dependably engaged,” Axios reported.

The New York Times reported that his debate preparations were also held during the day, so he had time for an afternoon nap.

The president confirmed his scheduling limitations to Democratic governors last week when he said he needed more sleep and should stop holding events past 8 p.m.

World leaders have even gone out of their way to adapt to his tighter schedule, but it still hasn’t worked.

The Wall Street Journal reported that at the G7 in Switzerland in June 2022, an early evening meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was scheduled, but Biden still skipped it and sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken instead.

When Blinken arrived, he announced to attendees that Biden had gone to bed (a claim the State Department has denied.)

The president has also skipped several formal dinners with world leaders while traveling abroad. He passed on attending the dinner at last year’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July.

Two months before that, he left a G7 dinner early when world leaders were gathered at Miyajima Island outside of Hiroshima, known for its iconic “floating” torii gate and domesticated deer population.

Biden didn’t attend the leaders’ dinner at the G20 in Bali in 2022. He did, however, show up to dinner in September when the G20 was in India.

For years, detailed notecards have guided Biden through events, but his reliance on them in recent months has tensed Democratic donors—even before the disastrous debate.

The sheets give a play-by-play of what the president is supposed to do – directions as simple as “YOU take YOUR seat.”

They give Biden the run-of-show for events where television cameras are rolling. And he’s shown that he’s needed the instructions – memorably wandering off an MSNBC set in June 2023 after a sit-down with the network’s Nicolle Wallace.

Some donors voiced concerns to Axios in February when Biden would use the notecards during private meetings to answer pre-screened questions. The staged question-and-answer sessions left donors wondering if Biden could withstand the rigors of a campaign, as it appeared he wasn’t able to provide off-the-cuff answers.

Last summer, Biden almost exclusively started taking the small stairs to board Air Force One.

He initially tripped up the stairs of the presidential plane, which was heading to Atlanta in March 2021, just two months into his administration. He did so again when leaving Warsaw in February 2023—after his grueling secret trip to Ukraine—and again in March 2023 when he headed to Selma, Alabama.

But after he tripped over a sandbag at a Colorado commencement, aides acknowledged to Politico that Biden’s use of the shorter Air Force One staircase was intentional to avoid future falls – as it cuts down the number of steps from 26 to 14.

In April, Biden suddenly changed the protocol for walking to Marine One, the presidential helicopter that waits for him on the South Lawn. Unless Biden were with the first lady for three-plus years, he’d walk to the aircraft solo. Aides would wait until the president had boarded and then make their way to the helicopter. But suddenly, when Biden was walking to the helicopter, a swarm of aides joined him for the lawn-crossing, which the White House press captured.

According to Axios, the president decided upon the swarm after some aides fretted that his solo walks across the South Lawn called too much attention to his stiff gait. With the aides surrounding him, the visual is less stark.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates ridiculed Axios for calling attention to the new, obscured view of the president walking.

“He’s fully visible except for a few seconds,” Bates said. “Impeach.”