President Joe Biden is pushing back on a growing bipartisan chorus of lawmakers, pundits, and medical experts and is refusing to submit to a cognitive test following a debate performance last week against former President Donald Trump where the former appeared vacant, confused, and had difficulty enunciating words and sentences.
During a taped and edited ABC News interview with former Bill Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos, who, among others in the media, has been accused of covering up Biden’s declining cognitive abilities for years, the president said that he has “completely [ruled] out” dropping his bid and that he was “confident” he could serve another four years in the White House, CBS News reported.
“I don’t think anybody’s more qualified to be president or win this race than me,” he told Stephanopoulos. “Who’s going to be able to hold NATO together like me? Who’s going to be able to be in a position where I’m able to keep the Pacific basin in a position where we’re at least check being in China now? Who’s going to – who’s going to do that? Who has that reach?”
He defended his debate performance by claiming that Trump “distracted him,” though he followed the rules and stopped talking when his time expired. The White House and Biden have also claimed that he had a cold and was tired from back-to-back trips to Europe, though he sequestered himself at Camp David more than a week before the debate to prepare for it allegedly.
“It came to me I was having a bad night when I realized that even when I was answering a question, even when they turned his mic off, he was still shouting,” Biden claimed during the interview. ” And I let it distract me. I’m not blaming it on that, but I realized that I just wasn’t in control.”
He also added that he didn’t “think” he watched his own debate performance afterward.
“It was a bad episode. No indication of any serious condition,” Biden said in a clip of the interview that aired during “World News Tonight.” “I was exhausted. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing and — and a bad night.”
Biden also declined to answer whether he would drop out if reliable people told him to, but said he would drop out if the “Lord Almighty” came down and told him to.
Meanwhile, a longtime ally of President Joe Biden and his party has come out on the side of many Republicans and is now calling on President Joe Biden to take a cognitive exam and release the results to the public like then-President Donald Trump did when he was still in office.
On Friday, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, recommended that the president undergo comprehensive cognitive and neurological testing in an op-ed published on the network’s website.
Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon, expressed concerns about Biden’s physical and mental condition following his debate with Trump last week. In his observations, Gupta pointed out Biden’s halting speech, confused statements, lack of concentration, rigid movement, and diminished facial expressions.
“For me as a brain specialist, it was concerning to watch President Joe Biden, and it quickly became clear that I was not alone in my reaction,” Gupta wrote. “Over the past week, I received more than a dozen calls, texts and emails from medical colleagues who, like me, specialize in the brain. It wasn’t that what we noticed was necessarily new but that it was particularly pronounced, and right from the start of the debate.”
Gupta referenced Biden’s most recent physical exam in February, conducted by a team of 20 doctors led by current White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor, including a neurologist. This “extremely detailed” neurological exam showed no signs of neurological disorders nor evidence of Parkinson’s disease, which might have accounted for Biden’s stiff gait and reduced facial expressions noted during his debate.
However, Gupta pointed out in his op-ed that no cognitive testing was performed at the time.
“As a doctor, I would want to understand the possibility of underlying dementia because, over the past several years, we have learned that there are medical treatments and lifestyle changes that can delay and, in some cases, even reverse the symptoms of the disease,” Gupta wrote.
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