Kevin McCarthy Tells Wild Story About Incoherent Biden Negotiating From Note Cards: ‘I Walked Out Depressed’

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju about meetings at the White House in which, he claims, President Joe Biden was incoherently reading from note cards.

The former GOP lawmaker joined CNN’s Capitol Hill correspondent for an interview at the RNC on Thursday — in which the pair discussed President Biden’s cognitive state.

McCarthy claimed that he saw “decline early on” in Biden’s presidency during meetings at the where White House where the president read talking points out loud from cards.

He told Raju that he would leave the meetings with Biden feeling “depressed as an American.”

RAJU: I want to turn to to Joe Biden. Because you were, this is obviously a lot of discussion about Joe Biden and what’s going to happen to him here at the top of the ticket. You were quoted in a Wall Street Journal story in June saying, I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house. He’s not the same person. You’re referring to the deterioration of Joe Biden, in your view. What specifically did you notice about him that you suggested that he or some slippage?

MCCARTHY: Well, a couple things. So when he became president and I was minority leader, he kind of shut us out from even communication. And I thought that was odd. But then when we won the majority and I went down before as speaker, I soon learned the reason why he has to speak from cards. And when he speaks from the cards and you want to debate what he said from the card to negotiate, he can’t go there. He shuts up the conversation. So I saw a real decline early on, and with each meeting I would have with them, it’s almost I saw a different Joe Biden. I remember one time being down there where I didn’t think he quite knew what was transpiring, and he took us on a like a wild tour down to the swimming pool. That made no sense in wintertime. And I remember Jill being on the other side of the table saying, no, no, they don’t want to go outside. And then he took us into he’s created this little office just outside, just down from the Oval Office. That’s his little private office and walked us into it. And, you know, there’s only a few people that can fit in it. Trump had it as a gift shop type thing. And in there he has a valet with a blue dress shirt all wrinkled sitting in there…Just every time I walked out depressed as an American, I didn’t tell anybody about that story, but because he was going off to a G7 meeting.

RAJU: Could you have been public about that at the time?

MCCARTHY: You know, this was before I was even speaker. So I’m thinking I didn’t have new interactions. I have started being public, as you saw, probably the first one out. And I was criticized many times about it. But what I learned is when he would meet with me, he would always talk from a card. And I learned from a negotiation tactic to disrupt him and he couldn’t carry on.

Watch the clip above via CNN .