A wild New York magazine feature detailing a "conspiracy" to hide President Biden’s mental decline claimed elite Democrats have long known about cognitive issues that have been under a microscope since last week’s disastrous debate. 

Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi penned "The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden," which featured the staggering subheadline, "The president’s mental decline was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters." Nuzzi noted that she began hearing similar stories from "Democratic officials, activists, and donors" in January about concerns related to Biden’s age and cognitive ability.

"Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day? Uniformly, these people were of a similar social strata. They lived and socialized in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. They did not wish to come forward with their stories. They did not want to blow a whistle," Nuzzi wrote. 

"They wished that they could whistle past what they knew and emerge in November victorious and relieved, having helped avoid another four years of Trump. What would happen after that? They couldn’t think that far ahead," she continued. "Their worries were more immediate. When they discussed what they knew, what they had seen, what they had heard, they literally whispered. They were scared and horrified."

Nuzzi wrote that concerned Democrats felt the urge to discuss their concerns, but didn’t want to do it on the record. 

"They needed to know that they were not alone and not crazy. Things were bad, and they knew things were bad, and they knew others must also know things were bad, and yet they would need to pretend, outwardly, that things were fine. The president was fine. The election would be fine. They would be fine. To admit otherwise would mean jeopardizing the future of the country and, well, nobody wanted to be responsible personally or socially for that," she wrote.

"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 added. "At a White House event last year, a guest recalled, with horror, realizing that the president would not be able to stay for the reception because, it was clear, he would not be able to make it through the reception. The guest wasn’t sure they could vote for Biden, since the guest was now open to an idea that they had previously dismissed as right-wing propaganda: The president may not really be the acting president after all."

Nuzzi said many are concerned that Biden "was becoming increasingly hard to get ahold of, even as it related to official government business," and that he is shielded by a group of trusted advisers, including First Lady Jill Biden. 

The lengthy feature detailed an alleged interaction at a White House event when the first lady needed to whisper in the president’s ear, reminding him to say "hello" to a megadonor by name. These types of interactions have left elite Democrats to ponder who was actually running America, according to Nuzzi. 

"I heard these questions posed at cocktail parties on the coasts but also at MAGA rallies in Middle America. 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, they 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," she wrote. 

"What I saw for myself confirmed something was amiss," Nuzzi added, noting that she spent much of 2020 on the campaign trail with Biden. 

"He stared off. He did not make eye contact. He would trip over his words, even if they were programmed in a teleprompter. On such occasions, he was hurried out of the venue quickly and ushered into a waiting SUV," she wrote. 

Nuzzi detailed a reception before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner earlier this year when she saw Biden in person for the first time in several weeks. 

"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. 

"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," she continued. "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 said she tried to make eye contact with Biden but "it was like his eyes, though open, were not on."

Nuzzi said a reporter joked that Biden appeared "40%" dead during the interaction. 

"’It was a bad night.’ That’s the spin from the White House and its allies about Thursday’s debate. But when I watched the president amble stiffly across the stage, my first thought was: He doesn’t look so bad. For months, everything I had heard, plus some of what I had seen, led me to brace for something much more dire," Nuzzi wrote.