For four years, the American people watched with a mix of bemusement and horror as Democrats and their media allies repeatedly lied and denied to the public President Joe Biden's increasingly apparent physical and mental decline, only for that fraudulent effort to come crashing down after Biden's disastrous June 2024 debate against President Donald Trump.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos interviewed Biden shortly after that debate, and a new book claims that the media figure privately acknowledged that the elderly president's condition was "heartbreaking up close," Fox News reported.

Yet, many Americans believe Stephanopoulos deserves no real credit for that quiet admission about Biden's true status, given that he was front and center among media figures for years in perpetuating the fiction that Biden was perfectly healthy and fully capable of governing the country.

Stephanopoulos admitted that Biden's mental decline was "heartbreaking" to witness

Author Chris Whipple recently published a new book titled "Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History," which purports to provide insider accounts and behind-the-scenes looks at some of the biggest moments of the 2024 presidential cycle.

In one part of the book, Whipple focused on President Biden's first post-debate interview with ABC News anchor Stephanopoulos, which had been intended to "staunch the bleeding" of Democrats demanding Biden be replaced as the party's nominee but instead only served to confirm that, as displayed during the debate -- and as had been suspected by millions for years -- that the "hoarse and semi-coherent" Biden simply wasn't up to the rigorous task of running the country, let alone running for re-election to another term.

"Stephanopoulos questioned the president gently, like a grandson," the best-selling author wrote. "Afterward, when I asked the ABC anchor by email for his impressions, he replied: 'Heartbreaking up close.'"

Stephanopoulos doubted that Biden could "serve four more years"

Fox News noted that the private admission of Stephanopoulos to Whipple about former President Biden's "heartbreaking" condition was similar to his frank, but later walked back, acknowledgement to a TMZ reporter immediately after the interview that "I don't think he can serve four more years."

An ABC News spokesperson quickly sought to distance the broadcast network from its anchor by insisting that he'd expressed "his own point of view and not the position of ABC News."

And, according to the Daily Mail, Stephanopoulos himself apologized for the comment about Biden's diminished capabilities and told a Puck News reporter, "Earlier today, I responded to a question from a passerby. I shouldn't have."

Media, Biden's team, were "gaslighting" and lying about Biden for years

The Daily Mail noted that many conservatives on social media rejected the new book's account of Stephanopoulos privately admitting that former President Biden's health status was "heartbreaking" after the terrible debate performance and equally bad interview, given the ABC News anchor's years-long involvement in fraudulently propping up Biden as being fully capable of serving as the president.

One such example comes from the Libs of TikTok X account, which shared the relevant details from Whipple's book but accurately asserted, "The media and Democrats tried gaslighting us for 4 years that everything was fine despite what our own eyes were seeing … never let them forget."

The outlet noted that Whipple himself, during an appearance Tuesday on CNN, suggested that what occurred with Biden's team in 2024 was "even stranger than a so-called cover-up," in that Biden's people "were really lost in a kind of fog of denial and delusion."

"The closest advisers to Biden believed, despite all the evidence, that Joe Biden was capable of running for reelection, of winning and of serving another four years. Now it was really delusional," the author continued. "This was different from a cover-up. It wasn't a Watergate-style cover-up. It wasn't a grand conspiracy as Karl Rove has described it."

"It really was a case of people who should have known better, believing that Biden could win," he added.