WHEN JOE BIDEN was inaugurated as US president in January 2021, he was the oldest person to take the office for the first time.

He was aged 78 and there had been reports about health concerns throughout his presidency.

However, these concerns ramped up dramatically last July, when Hollywood star George Clooney penned an opinion piece in the New York Times calling on Biden to drop out of the presidential election.

“I love Joe Biden,” wrote Clooney.

But he added: “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.

“Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw.”

The fundraiser Clooney referred to, which he helped organise, happened last June in Los Angeles and the encounter is explored in a new book on Biden’s re-election campaign that will be released tomorrow.

The book is titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again”.

It is based on interviews with more than 200 people with knowledge of the final two years of Biden’s presidency and authored by CNN journalist Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios.

It will be released just two days after Biden’s office announced that the former US president has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.

‘Clooney felt a knot in his stomach’

Clooney first met Biden in 2001 and the two had become well acquainted since, but at the fundraiser last July, it appeared as though Biden didn’t recognise the actor.

The book’s authors write that Biden “appeared severely diminished” at the event and “was taking tiny steps, and an aide seemed to be guiding him by the arm”.

“Clooney felt a knot form in his stomach as the President approached him,” reads an excerpt from the book.

“He was shaken to his core.

“The President hadn’t recognised him, a man he had known for years.”

The book details how Barack Obama had to finish Biden’s sentences at the fundraiser when Biden “trailed off incoherently”.

Clooney had been willing to brush aside his concern but the debate with Trump on 27 June “confirmed all the fears that he’d shoved aside”.

Clooney then called Obama to say that he was considering writing an opinion piece calling for Biden to step aside but Obama reportedly remarked that doing so would only make Biden dig in deeper.

Despite this, Clooney published the op-ed and 11 days later, Biden announced he was stepping aide.

“I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” said Biden, who was later replaced by his vice president Kamala Harris.

Meanwhile, the book outlines that there were internal discussions among aides of putting Biden in a wheelchair should he have won re-election.

“But they couldn’t do so until after the election,” the book’s authors write.

The only US president known to have used a wheelchair was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and this was concealed during his presidency.

The authors report that Biden’s team also tried to figure out shorter walking paths for public appearances and changed his visual briefings before events to ensure he knew every step he was expected to take.