President Biden told reporters Wednesday he’s getting his annual physical as questions mount about his mental fitness as he seeks a second term in November.
The 81-year-old president shouted, “I’m going to Walter Reed to get my physical” as he walked to the Marine One helicopter on the White House lawn.
The doctor’s appointment was not announced in advance, nor was it on the presidential schedule given a day ahead of time to the executive press corps.
Special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents over the span of decades, released Feb. 8, said he should not face criminal charges in part because no jury would convict him due to perceived senility.
Presidential physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor will release a report following the appointment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.
Biden is the oldest-ever president, and in a break from historical precedent, O’Connor has never been allowed to take journalists’ questions on the chief executive’s health.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this month that O’Connor told her he had not conducted a cognitive exam on Biden last year because his performance as president showed one was not needed.
Hur wrote in his report that his team “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency” but that “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Polls show that voters are more concerned about Biden’s age than they are about that of former President Donald Trump, 77.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll this month found 86% of US adults said Biden is too old for another term while 59% said that both Biden and Trump are too old.
A New York Times poll in November found 71% of swing-state voters say Biden is “too old to be an effective president” compared to 39% who said the same of Trump.
A Wall Street Journal poll released in September found that 73% of registered voters believed Biden was too old, versus 47% who said so of Trump.
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