White House aide dishes on dealing with moody, aging Biden: 'People are scared'

• A new report details how Biden had long been in a cocoon before his disastrous debate performance.
• Top aides reportedly have to be careful about what they tell Biden — for fear of setting him off.
• "It's very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him," said a top aide.

In the wake of President Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance, top White House aides are starting to open up — albeit anonymously — about how things got to this point.

According to POLITICO, one key explanation is that the president is in a cocoon, surrounded by a tight circle of top aides who keep him isolated in an effort to manage public perceptions of the 81-year-old president.

That reportedly includes tightly managing the information that the president receives in his daily briefing in an effort to avoid triggering a negative reaction from him.

"It's like, 'You can't include that, that will set him off,' or 'Put that in, he likes that,'" a senior administration official told the outlet. "It's a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he's being briefed. It's very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him."

"He doesn't take advice from anyone other than those few top aides," the official added. "It becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it."

White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates denied that information was being curated to avoid upsetting Biden in a statement to POLITICO.

But the perception of a relatively restricted White House is apparently shared by other Democratic officials outside the building.

"I think the Biden team is pretty insular and doesn't really care what anybody says," a senior House Democrat told the outlet.

The report went on to detail how Biden's relative insularity developed in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was still raging when the president first took office. At the time, social distancing and relative isolation were simply unavoidable.

While many Democrats have been thrown into a state of panic in the wake of Biden's debate, the president and his team have largely hunkered down.

While there may be significant risks to continuing into the November election with Biden at the top of the ticket, there are also potential risks to replacing him, including the possibility of chaotic infighting ahead of the Democratic convention.