President Biden “doesn’t need a cognitive test,” the White House’s top spokesperson said Wednesday after the chief executive joked that his doctors “think I look too young” upon his return from his annual physical.
“They think I look too young,” the 81-year-old president said at an afternoon event focused on policing and crime as he brushed off broad public concern about his age as he seeks a second term.
“There is nothing different than last year,” added Biden, saying that “everything’s great” with his health.
The more than two-hour-long medical appointment was conducted by a team of doctors who determined the president is mentally shipshape, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the regular White House briefing.
“The president doesn’t need a cognitive test … that is the assessment of the president’s doctor, that is the assessment of the neurologist,” Jean-Pierre said.
“He passes a cognitive test every day — every day — as he moves from one topic to another topic, understanding the granular level of these topics. You saw him talking about fighting crime today, tomorrow he’s going to the border,” she added.In public remarks this month, Biden has on three occasions mistakenly described recent conversations with long-retired and deceased leaders of Germany and France, and followed the stumbles by mixing up the leaders of Mexico and Egypt at a bellicose press conference denying that he’s suffering cognitive decline.
Biden’s physical was not announced in advance, nor was it on the presidential schedule given a day ahead of time to the White House press corps — and only became public when Biden shouted to reporters on the White House lawn, “I’m going to Walter Reed to get my physical” Wednesday morning.
Special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents over many decades, released Feb. 8, said the president should not face criminal charges in part because no jury would convict him due to perceived senility.
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.”
Presidential physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor was due to 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.
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 that 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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