President Biden was unaware for days that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized: report

President Biden was unaware for days that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had been hospitalized, according to a report.

Biden, 81, was finally informed Thursday afternoon by National security advisor Jake Sullivan that Austin had been hospitalized on Monday, Jan. 1, sources told CNN.

Austin was admitted into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center due to complications from a minor elective surgery. No more details of his ailment were released. 

The public was not notified that one of the nation’s top officials was incapacitated until Friday, when Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s spokesman made the announcement.

Austin said in a statement on Saturday that he is “on the mend and look[s] forward to returning to the Pentagon soon.”

“I also understand the media concerns about transparency and I recognize I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed,” the 70-year-old continued. “I commit to doing better.”

It’s not clear when Austin, a retired four-star Army general who served 41 years in the military, will be discharged from the hospital.

Ryder told reporters Friday that there were several elements that went into the decision to withhold the news of Austin’s hospitalization.

“This has been an evolving situation in which we had to consider a number of factors including medical and personal privacy issues,” Ryder said.

The Pentagon Press Association slammed decision to keep Americans in the dark about Austin.

“The fact that he has been at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for four days and the Pentagon is only now alerting the public late on a Friday evening is an outrage,” the group said in a letter to Ryder and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Chris Meagher.