Axios reports:

Joe Biden’s close aides have carefully shielded him from people inside and outside the White House since the beginning of his presidency.

Why it matters: The intermittent access has resulted in many current and former White House aides being shocked at the 81-year-old president’s limitations at the debate Thursday night.

Driving the news: Current and former White House aides are feeling whiplash — and now questioning whether Biden could fulfill a second term.

• “It’s time for Joe to go.” That’s what Chandler West, the White House’s deputy director of photography from January 2021 to May 2022, wrote in an Instagram story after the debate.
• “I know many of these people and how the White House operates. They will say he has a ‘cold’ or just experienced a ‘bad night,’ but for weeks and months, in private, they have all said what we saw last night — Joe is not as strong as he was just a couple of years ago,” West wrote, according to screenshots obtained by Axios.
• Reached by phone, West said he wrote the post because “the debate was not the first bad day, and it’s not gonna be the last.” He declined to comment further.
• The president and his team have acknowledged Biden had a bad night but said he had a cold.

Zoom in: Biden’s behavior stunned many in the White House in part because Biden’s closest aides — often led by Jill Biden’s top aide, Anthony Bernal, and deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini — took steps early in his term to essentially rope off the president. [Continue reading…]