White House aides cut off outside access to former President Joe Biden, which ultimately backfired and worsened his cognitive function, according to a new book.

The book, ‘Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History,’ published Tuesday, claims the White House kept Biden from socializing even with those he regarded as friends and allies. 

‘Even Biden’s acquaintances were kept at bay,’ Chris Whipple, a former producer for CBS’ ’60 Minutes,’ wrote. ‘Bill Daley, former White House chief of staff to Barack Obama, paid frequent visits to one of the president’s senior advisors in the West Wing. ‘I went to the White House a dozen times,’ he told me. ‘Never once did somebody say, ‘Oh, come on in and see the president.’ Never. Everything was scripted.’ 

Not everyone in the White House thought it was a wise strategy, according to the book. Whipple wrote that one White House aide suggested ‘walling Biden off from the world was a grave mistake.’ 

‘‘They were afraid he might say the wrong thing or might feed the mental acuity narrative,’ he told me. ‘And so he started seeing fewer and fewer people. They allowed his faculties to atrophy. But I think, like knives, they have to be sharpened. They get sharpened by rubbing them up against steel. And they don’t get sharpened by sitting in a drawer,’’ Whipple wrote.

‘Uncharted’ chronicles the 2024 election cycle and the aftermath of Biden’s appearance at the presidential debate with Donald Trump June 27 that prompted Biden to bow out of the race in July. 

The book also details how, after the debate, Biden conducted an interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos July 5 in an attempt to prove to the public his mental faculties were intact amid calls for him to exit the race. 

But Whipple wrote that Biden sounded ‘semi-coherent’ during the interview, which occurred weeks before Biden withdrew his candidacy July 21. 

‘Stephanopoulos questioned the president gently, like a grandson,’ Whipple wrote. ‘Afterward, when I asked the ABC anchor by email for his impressions, he replied: ‘Heartbreaking up close.’’

A spokesperson for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report. 

Mike Huckabee, President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, has been confirmed to the position by the United States Senate. 

The Senate voted 53 to 46 on Tuesday to advance Huckabee’s nomination. He was confirmed Wednesday by a 53-46 vote and will now represent the U.S. as Israel continues its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., an outspoken pro-Israel lawmaker, was the only Democrat to support Huckabee’s confirmation. 

While Republicans have championed Huckabee as an ardent supporter of Israel, Democrats have questioned his previous ‘extreme’ position on Palestinians.

The former Arkansas governor has previously argued it is Israel’s right to annex the West Bank and has flatly rejected the push to establish a two-state solution when it comes to the Gaza Strip. 

Huckabee has not commented on whether he still views the West Bank as Israel’s right to claim, or where he stands when it comes to Trump’s position on the Gaza Strip, which the president said he would like to turn into the ‘riviera of the Middle East’ and called for the ‘relocation’ of more than 2 million Palestinians.

During his confirmation hearing, the former governor pushed back on claims that Trump wants to take over the Gaza Strip, insisting the president has not called for the ‘forced displacement’ of Palestinians from Gaza – ‘unless it is for their safety.’

‘If confirmed, it will be my responsibility to carry out the president’s priorities, not mine,’ Huckabee said in response to questions levied at him by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.

However, Huckabee’s testimony during Senate questioning is unlikely to have garnered much new support from Democrats in Congress. 

‘Huckabee’s positions are not the words of a thoughtful diplomat – they are the words of a provocateur whose views are far outside international consensus and contrary to the core bipartisan principles of American diplomacy,’ New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, a senior Jewish Democrat, said in a statement last month. ‘In one of the most volatile and violent areas in the world today, there is no need for more extremism, and certainly not from the historic ambassador’s post and behind the powerful seal of the United States.’

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Former Vice President Kamala Harris engaged in a ‘dark-arts operation’ to undercut other potential running mates for former President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, according to a new book. 

The book, ‘Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,’ published April 1 by William Morrow and Company, claims that Harris spread unfavorable information about other possible vice presidential picks for Biden. 

‘In 2020, when she beat out a crowded field to join Biden’s ticket, Harris advisers ran a dark-arts operation to undermine the competition, circulating negative information on her rivals,’ write political journalists Jonathan Allen of NBC News and Amie Parnes of The Hill.

Specifically, the book singled out Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. 

‘‘We stabbed Karen Bass a little bit. We stabbed Susan Rice a little bit. We stabbed Stacey Abrams a little bit,’ one adviser said of the effort four years earlier. ‘We stabbed Gretchen Whitmer.’’

The book did not delve into the specifics Harris took to undercut her opponents as they all vied for the vice presidential nomination. 

But any steps Harris took to undermine those women didn’t damage their relationships enough to stop them from backing her in the 2024 election. 

Bass endorsed Harris, and both Whitmer and Abrams appeared at Harris campaign events in 2024. Additionally, Rice also defended Harris in July after Rep. Ted Burchett, R-Tenn., described Harris as a ‘DEI hire.’ Rice described the comment as ‘incredibly insulting,’ in an interview with CNN. 

Harris, who previously served as a senator from California, has signed with CAA Speakers, which represents high-profile celebrities. CAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

‘Fight’ chronicles how President Donald Trump secured the White House for a second term. Allen and Parnes conducted interviews with more than 150 political insiders for the book, according to the book’s description.

The book also details how former President Barack Obama remained wary of supporting Harris in the 2024 election to replace Biden, amid concerns about his mental fitness. Likewise, the book shares that Obama doubted Biden’s political abilities as the race dragged on. 

Sen. Adam Schiff fired back late Tuesday after President Donald Trump mocked the California Democrat during a black-tie Republican dinner in Washington, D.C.

‘The President of the United States seems oddly focused on me,’ Schiff posted after footage of Trump’s jokes made the rounds.

‘Shouldn’t he be focused on the economy he’s crashing?’ he wrote.

During the event hosted by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) – the House Republicans’ campaign arm – Trump wove in a few insults about the Boston-born Angeleno’s appearance into a verbal indictment of his role in the 2016 Russia collusion investigation.

‘Adam ‘Schifty’ Schiff – can you believe this guy?’ Trump said. ‘He’s got the smallest neck I’ve ever seen – and the biggest head: We call him Watermelon-Head.’ Trump went on to ruminate about how Schiff’s ‘big fat face’ could ‘stand on a neck’ the size of the president’s finger. 

‘It’s the weirdest thing – it’s a mystery; no one can understand it.’

Trump went on to call Schiff ‘one of the most dishonest human beings I’ve ever seen,’ and wondered aloud how people like Schiff could be able to run for office.

‘He was in charge of the fake witch hunt – with ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ – it was a made-up story,’ he said, playing off the ‘Brady Bunch’ line ‘Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.’

In 2020, Schiff managed the House’s impeachment probe into Trump, leading off his opening remarks that January by comparing former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s 1792 warning to then-President George Washington about future American leaders who would rise to the executive ‘despotic in [their] ordinary demeanor.’

‘When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits… known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind,’ Schiff said at the time.

Since then, he and Trump have often traded criticisms, with Trump also referring to him in the past as a ‘structural marvel,’ with an appearance like a ‘finger on a basketball.’

In October, Trump compared Schiff to the ‘enemy from within’ and called him a ‘sleazebag’ on FOX Business before lamenting that the Democrat would likely defeat former MLB star Steve Garvey for California’s open U.S. Senate seat.

For his part, Schiff has also clapped back at Republicans for their criticisms – responding in July to a report that now-Vice President JD Vance had lamented campaign name-calling after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called the GOP ticket ‘weird.’

‘Shifty Schiff, pencil neck and watermelon head, would like a word, JD,’ Schiff responded at the time on Facebook.

Fox News Digital reached out to Schiff for additional comment but did not immediately hear back.

China’s innovation in artificial intelligence is ‘accelerating,’ Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, told Fox News Digital – but he maintained that the United States remains the world’s dominant power in AI and the Trump administration’s ‘promote and protect’ strategy will solidify that standing. 

Kratsios, who served as chief technology officer during the first Trump administration, sat for an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on Monday.

‘The White House in the first Trump administration redefined national tech policy to focus on American leadership in emerging technologies, and those were technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and 5G, [which] were big back then,’ Kratsios said. ‘The president, at that time, signed the executive order prioritizing U.S. leadership in AI, back in 2019 when people weren’t even talking about it.’

‘He recognized that it was critical for the U.S. to lead in AI,’ Kratsios said. ‘We got the ball rolling on what the U.S. national strategy is and how we would win.’ 

During his first administration, Trump signed the first-ever executive order on AI in 2019. He also took executive action in 2020 to establish the first-ever guidance for federal agency adoption of AI to deliver services to the American people and ‘foster public trust’ in the technology. 

But Kratsios said that when former President Joe Biden took office, the attitude of his administration toward AI shifted to ‘one of fear and one of over-regulation.’ 

‘There was a fixation on what I would call harms, so, spending time and energy thinking about all the things that could go wrong with this technology, versus having a balanced approach, where you try to minimize things that could go poorly, and more importantly, look at ways this technology can transform America for the better,’ Kratsios explained, noting that Biden officials were ‘harms focused,’ which he said was ‘manifested in a lot of the policies that they did, in the way that they were very reticent to applying some of this technology to a lot of the issues that government faced, like how you make agencies more efficient.’ 

Kratsios reflected on Trump’s AI message during the campaign, saying he ‘made it very clear that we as a country need to win and be dominant in artificial intelligence.’ 

‘And he acted very decisively,’ Kratsios said, pointing to Trump’s move on his third day in office to direct him and other officials to develop an AI action plan. 

‘It was a way to review everything that had been done under the Biden administration and turn the page with an agenda that’s focused on sustaining and ensuring continued U.S. leadership in this particular technology, and that’s what we’ve been working on,’ Kratsios said. 

Kratsios explained that the U.S. is ‘the leader’ in AI, specifically when it comes to the ‘three layers of technology,’ which he said are chips or high-end semiconductors, the model itself and the application layer. 

‘If you look at all three of those layers, the U.S. is the leader,’ Kratsios said. ‘We have the best chips. We have the best models. And we have the best applications to date.’ 

But he warned that the Trump administration is ‘seeing the velocity of innovation’ from China.

‘We’re seeing the speed at which the PRC is catching up with us is actually accelerating,’ he explained. 

Kratsios referenced DeepSeek, which was released by a Chinese firm earlier in 2025 and develops large language models.

‘I think what DeepSeek revealed is that the Chinese continue to make progress and are trying really hard to catch up with us on those three layers,’ Kratsios said. 

But the key to maintaining U.S. dominance in the space is the Trump administration’s ‘promote and protect’ strategy, Kratsios explained. 

Kratsios said the Trump administration will ‘promote’ by continuing to accelerate the development of technology and encouraging more Americans, American companies and countries around the world to use that technology. 

‘And then on the protect side, what is it that the U.S. has which could be useful to the PRC to accelerate their efforts in AI? We protect that technology from access by the Chinese,’ Kratsios said, pointing to high-end semiconductors and chips that the Chinese ‘shouldn’t have access to, because that would make it easier for them to accelerate their efforts.’ 

‘How do we speed up innovation here at home and slow down our adversaries?’ Kratsios said. 

The answer, Kratsios said, is AI research and development that continues to drive innovation. He also said the Trump administration needs to continue to remove regulations and barriers to AI innovation, and also prepare and train Americans in the workforce to ‘better leverage this technology.’ 

Kratsios said another step is ensuring that foreign allies partner with the U.S. to ‘make sure that they are also keeping the PRC at bay and that they continue to use the American AI stack.’ 

‘So, if you’re any country in the world that wants to use AI, you’d want to use an American stack,’ he explained. ‘So we should make it as easy as possible in order for us to export our technology to like-minded partners.’ 

As for China, Kratsios said the PRC ‘is probably one of the most sophisticated surveillance states in the world, and that is underpinned by their own artificial intelligence technology.’ 

‘I think the goal of the United States should be to continue to be the dominant power in AI. And there are certain inputs to the development of AI which we can control, and which we would not want the PRC to have access to,’ he said. ‘And the most important pieces are sort of these very high-end chips that they can use to train models, and also certain equipment that would allow them to build their own very high-end chips.’ 

He added: ‘And if we can kind of continue to make it challenging for them to do that. I think it’ll be the benefit of the U.S.’ 

Looking ahead, Kratsios echoed the president, saying the U.S. is in the ‘golden age’ and that this special moment in time is ‘underpinned by unbelievable science and technology.’ 

‘We want to put an American flag on Mars,’ Kratsios said. ‘We want to fly supersonic again. We want drones to be delivering packages around the world. We want AI to be used by American workers to allow them to do their jobs better, safer and faster.’ 

He added: ‘We have an opportunity to all these things, like so much more, in these four years. And this office is going to be the home for driving that innovation across so many technological domains.’