Longtime Biden friends say president didn’t remember their names in social settings: Report

A New York Magazine article published Thursday described multiple instances indicating President Biden’s decline has been treated like a "dark family secret for many elite supporters," such as him not remembering the names of longtime friends.

President Biden’s widely criticized performance in last week's debate has opened the floodgates of commentators questioning his ability to serve. New York Magazine’s Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi added to the pile-on in a grim piece headlined, "The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden", based on months of interviews that caused a major stir on social media.

Among numerous accounts of her work covering Biden in the past few years, Nuzzi wrote that those "who encountered the president in social settings sometimes left their interactions disturbed. Longtime friends of the Biden family, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, were shocked to find that the president did not remember their names."

She wrote one account of a guest who had attended a White House event last year, who allegedly realized Biden would not be able to make it through the entire reception, making the guest suddenly "open to an idea that they had previously dismissed as right-wing propaganda: The president may not really be the acting president after all."

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WASHINGTON, DC May 14, 2024: US President Joe Biden looks up at the rain during his remarks during an event to promote American investments and jobs in the Rose Garden of the White House on Tuesday May 14, 2024. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

In the reporter's own account of meeting the President in person, she wrote about him as if he were an "uncanny" entity in science fiction or a horror novel that was "not of this earth."

"Up close, the president does not look quite plausible. It’s not that he’s old. We all know what old looks like. Bernie Sanders is old. Mitch McConnell is old. Most of the ruling class is old. The president was something stranger, something not of this earth," she wrote.

"This was true even in 2020. His face had then an uncanny valley quality that injectable aficionados call ‘low trust’ — if only by millimeters, his cosmetically altered proportions knocked his overall facial harmony into the realm of the improbable," Nuzzi described. "His thin skin, long a figurative problem and now a literal one, was pulled tightly over cheeks that seemed to vary month to month in volume. Under artificial light and in the sunshine, he took on an unnatural gleam. He looked, well, inflated. His eyes were half-shut or open very wide. They appeared darker than they once had, his pupils dilated. He did not blink at regular intervals."

Nuzzi also wrote on the irony that similar questions about who runs the Biden administration were being asked both "at cocktail parties on the coasts but also at MAGA rallies in Middle America."

President Joe Biden is thus far not listening to calls for him to abandon his re-election campaign. ((Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images))

"There emerged a comical overlap between the beliefs of the nation’s most elite liberal Biden supporters and the beliefs of the most rabid and conspiratorial supporters of former President Trump. Resistance or QAnon," she wrote. "[T]hey shared a grand theory of America in 2024: There has to be a secret group of high-level government leaders who control Biden and who will soon set into motion their plan to replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. Nothing else made sense. They were in full agreement."

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment and did not receive an immediate reply.

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The White House has repeatedly defended Biden against questions about his mental fitness and said there is no discussion about him resigning or leaving the campaign.

Asked this week if the president had dementia, Alzheimer's or any other sort of degenerative illness, Karine Jean-Pierre flatly said no.

"Are you ready for it? It's a no. And I hope you're asking the other guy the same exact question," Jean-Pierre said, referring to former President Trump.

Alexander Hall is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..