President Joe Biden Blames Foreign Travel for His Poor Debate Performance: 'I Almost Fell Asleep on Stage'

President Joe Biden blamed traveling for his disastrous debate performance on Tuesday, July 2.

“I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world a couple of times … shortly before the debate,” he said while talking to donors at a fundraiser in Virginia. “I didn’t listen to my staff … and then I almost fell asleep on stage.”

“It’s not an excuse but an explanation,” the 81-year-old stated.

As OK! previously reported, Biden's performance was heavily critiqued after he appeared to freeze up and lose his train of thought several times throughout the night.

However, the president tried to stay positive prior the 2024 election.

“I think we did well,” Biden said post-event.

“No. It’s hard to debate a liar. The New York Times pointed out he lied 26 times,” he said, noting he had a sore throat.

However, journalist Carl Bernstein believes things are worse behind the scenes.

"These are people, several of them, who are very close to President Biden, who love him, have supported him – among them are some people who have raised a lot of money for him – and they are adamant that what we saw the other night, the Joe Biden we saw, is not a one-off. That there have been 15, 20 occasions in the last year-and-a-half when the president has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed, and what’s so significant is the people that this is coming from and also how many people around the president are aware of such incidents, including some reporters, incidentally, who witness some of them," Bernstein said during an appearance on Anderson Cooper 360 on Monday, July 1, just a few days after the debate took place.

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Bernstein claimed the insiders spoke to former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who supervised Biden's debate prep, about the president's "problem," but were "pushed back repeatedly" when it was brought up.

“There have been numerous instances where the president has lost his train of thought [and] can’t pick it up again,” Bernstein claimed. “There was a fundraiser in which he started at the podium, and then he became very stiff, according to the people there, as if it were almost a kind of rigor mortis set in.”

Since Biden became "very stiff," a chair "had to be brought for him" in order for him to finish the event.