Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker Criticizes Trump’s “Diminished Capacity” While Avoiding 2024 Challenge to Biden

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Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, widely seen as quietly laying the groundwork for a potential 2028 presidential bid, has drawn attention for recent comments criticizing former President Donald Trump’s mental capacity, despite remaining notably silent during the 2024 campaign on President Joe Biden’s cognitive fitness.

Speaking Thursday on The Bulwark podcast—a self-described conservative outlet often critical of Trump—Pritzker argued that White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller has been exploiting Trump’s “diminished capacity” to advance hardline immigration policies.

“I do think he needs help,” Pritzker said of Trump, according to The Hill. “And I don’t think anybody around him on a day-to-day basis wants to get him any help because they have more power based upon his diminished capacity.”

Pritzker specifically singled out Miller as the driving force behind the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enforcement tactics. “He’s clearly the person that is aiming to have Donald Trump become an authoritarian leader,” Pritzker said. “And I wish that, you know, people could at least recognize that Stephen Miller is bad for the country, and he is abusing the fact that Donald Trump has diminished capacity.”

Critics note the irony of Pritzker’s comments, given that during the 2024 election cycle he, like many Democrats, largely avoided publicly confronting concerns about President Biden’s cognitive health—a matter that unfolded visibly over the past four years.

Pritzker’s remarks come as part of a broader trend among Democratic leaders quietly preparing for future political runs while taking aim at Trump’s ongoing influence in Republican politics.

So that’s a recent clip. Here’s President Joe Biden during his presidency, making a friendly appearance at a Wisconsin brewery in January 2024:

And here’s President Biden facing the first notably unfriendly audience of his 2024 campaign:

For those with memories longer than President Biden’s, it’s worth recalling that he attributed his poor debate performance to jet lag from a trip he had returned from well beforehand.

Interestingly, jet lag didn’t seem to affect Donald Trump during his Middle East trip—just saying.

So, what’s the connection to Governor J.B. Pritzker, aside from comparing an obviously diminished Biden with a Trump that Pritzker claims is similarly impaired? He wasn’t responsible for Biden continuing in that condition, right?

Actually, he arguably bears some responsibility.

As early as 2022, reporting from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson in their book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again laid out the political maneuvering behind the scenes. The book details that Bill Daley, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations, “hardly recognized” Biden on television and understood the president was in serious cognitive trouble. Daley wanted a high-profile figure to challenge Biden to prevent the Democratic primary from defaulting to an underprepared candidate.

From Original Sin:

In 2023, he made some calls to see if any heavy hitters were thinking about running against Biden in the Democratic primaries. Having been around politics forever, Daley felt strongly that the notion that Biden would be up to the task the following year was unsustainable. If they waited too long, the inevitable moment when Biden bowed out would saddle the Democratic Party with Vice President Harris as the nominee, and she was even less popular than Biden. Neither California Governor Gavin Newsom nor Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear was willing to take the plunge. Daley also reached out through an emissary to his own governor, JB Pritzker. They all said no. Others had advised them that doing so would make them pariahs; when and if Biden lost, they would be blamed.

Later, Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota would mount a challenge himself, not because he wanted the nomination, but because he believed Biden should not run. Phillips sought to recruit others to challenge the president, directly contacting Governors J.B. Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer—both declined.

Pritzker, so vocal now about presidents with “diminished capacity,” avoided even a phone call about intervening in the primary, essentially sidestepping a battle that needed to happen—and which happened anyway. Even after Biden’s faltering debate performance, Pritzker continued actively campaigning for him.

“Listen: Joe Biden is our nominee. I am for Joe Biden. I’ve been campaigning for Joe Biden. I think you’ve seen I’ve got dates scheduled to go to Indiana, to Ohio for Joe Biden,” he told Capitol News Illinois on July 9, 2024.

The very next day, July 10, Pritzker was caught on a hot mic admitting what had long been apparent:

“We’re just going to keep fighting. I don’t know what to say,” Pritzker, sounding resigned, said. “We’re going to do what we have to do. I don’t like where we are.”

Of course, one can’t help but wonder what might have happened if Democrats had a viable alternative to Biden or Dean Phillips—someone Pritzker himself was reportedly contacted about.

Now, however, Pritzker positions himself as a critic, claiming an American president suffers from such “diminished capacity” that he is allegedly manipulated by Stephen Miller and others in the Trump White House—despite no clear evidence to support this assertion.

This isn’t merely a matter of Pritzker losing his hall pass on such criticisms. It’s the stark contrast: he labels a vigorous president as impaired while lacking the courage to challenge a sitting president of his own party, even when the signs of decline were evident. Not that anyone needed another reason to question J.B. Pritzker’s presidential prospects—but this certainly adds to the list.

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