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New criticism is being directed at Jill Biden after a former senior aide accused her of attempting to reshape public perceptions of her reaction to President Biden’s widely criticized debate performance in 2024.

Michael LaRosa, who previously served as a spokesman for Jill Biden, said the former first lady appears to be revising her account of what she thought during the debate, after recently revealing that she feared her husband might be suffering a medical emergency while on stage.

According to LaRosa, the effort is aimed at altering how the public remembers both the debate and her response to it.

“They’re trying to change the tape in people’s minds about who she is… that’s why she’s sort of changing her tune a little bit about her reaction in real time,” LaRosa said. “She wants to say, ‘Oh no, my reaction was just as concerning and was just as severe as everyone at home. I was shocked.'”

LaRosa argued that Jill Biden effectively became the public face of the administration’s immediate response following the debate and suggested that a more candid reaction at the time would have resonated with voters.

He said she was “the face and the voice of the initial reaction for the country,” and that if she had reacted at the time with the sentiments she later shared with CBS, “it would have been a more human response.”

In the moments following the June 2024 debate, Jill Biden publicly praised her husband before a crowd of supporters.

“You did such a great job, you answered every question, you knew all the facts,” she said to then-President Biden in front of a crowd of cheering supporters following the debate in June 2024.

However, in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning that aired last week, she offered a dramatically different description of what she was thinking while watching the event unfold.

“I don’t know what happened. I mean, as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death,” she told CBS Sunday Morning in an interview that aired last week.

Republicans seized on Biden’s debate performance at the time as evidence that he was no longer fit to continue serving as commander in chief. Democrats, by contrast, largely insisted that the performance was an isolated incident rather than a reflection of a broader decline.

While Jill Biden’s recent remarks appeared to reinforce the argument that something unusual occurred that night, Axios reporter Alex Thompson challenged the notion that the debate performance was an isolated event.

Drawing on reporting conducted for the book Original Sin, which examines President Biden’s years in office, Thompson said aides had witnessed similar episodes on other occasions.

“Biden aides told Jake Tapper and me that they had seen him act that way before and after. Those moments became more difficult to predict and conceal,” Thompson said, referring to comments gathered during the writing of “Original Sin,” a book covering President Biden’s time in office.

{Matzav.com}

Signs of growing turmoil are emerging at the highest levels of Iran’s leadership, with a report claiming that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has raised the possibility of stepping down as the country grapples with mounting political, military, and economic pressures.

According to a report by Iran International, Pezeshkian sent a letter to Mojtaba Khamenei warning that the regime’s ability to survive is nearing a breaking point. The report states that the Iranian president made clear he would not remain in office if current conditions continue.

If accurate, the message would represent one of the sharpest public indications yet of tensions between Iran’s civilian leadership and the powerful military and religious figures who wield significant influence behind the scenes in Tehran.

The reported development follows earlier claims by Iran International that serious disagreements have emerged between Pezeshkian and leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps over the management of the war and its economic consequences.

According to sources cited by the outlet, Pezeshkian warned that without a ceasefire, Iran’s economy could face collapse within a matter of weeks.

The report further alleges that Pezeshkian sought to regain executive powers that had effectively been stripped from the government, but that request was rejected by IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi.

At the same time, the outlet reported that the president repeatedly attempted to arrange an urgent meeting with Mojtaba Khamenei but was unable to secure one.

The latest report paints a picture of an increasingly strained leadership structure in Tehran, with the president signaling that he may no longer be willing to bear responsibility for the country’s deteriorating situation while key security institutions continue to dictate policy and strategy.

{Matzav.com}