President Joe Biden was protected by those closest to him who knew he was faltering as president, according to a report published late last week.

Citing sources, The New York Times reported that Biden’s aides saw that he was not the same as he was a few years before and that they worked to protect him as best they could.

“The people closest to President Biden were well aware that he had changed. He talked more slowly than he had just a few years before, needed to hoist himself out of his seat in the presidential limousine and walked with a halting gait,” the report began.

His longtime aide, Mike Donilon, reportedly told the president in 2022 that his “biggest issue is the perception of age.”

However, being stubborn and defensive, the president took that advice and ignored it when he announced in 2023 that he was again going to campaign for reelection before consulting his aides or his family, the Times reported.

When he was interviewed on January 5 by USA Today, the president acknowledged that he did not know if he would have made it through another term in the White House.

“Who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?” he said then.

After dozens of interviews, The Times reported that aides “recognized his physical frailty to a greater degree than they have publicly acknowledged. Then they cooperated, according to interviews with more than two dozen aides, allies, lawmakers and donors, to manage his decline.

“They rearranged meetings to make sure Mr. Biden was in a better mood — a strategy one person close to him described as how aides should handle any president.

At times, they delayed sharing information with him, including negative polling data, as they debated the best way to frame it. They surrounded him with aides when he walked from the White House to the waiting presidential helicopter on the South Lawn so that news cameras could not capture his awkward bearing,” the report said.