As the country’s oldest presidential candidate and then its oldest president, President Joe Biden‘s health has been discussed more than most of his predecessors.
But as Biden and the White House remain adamant they have been transparent regarding his annual physical examination and medical records, special counsel Robert Hur‘s assessment of the president’s memory and mental acuity have renewed calls for him to undergo a cognitive test this year.
The White House shared the results of Biden’s most recent physical last February, his 2022 checkup delayed until 2023. The five-page document, described by White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor as a “health summary,” referred to a neurological consultation concerning the president’s stiff walk but not a cognitive test, such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which detects dementia or other forms of decline, according to Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX). Jackson served alongside O’Connor at the White House when he was former President Donald Trump‘s physician and administered Trump’s Montreal test.
Despite insisting he did not want to diagnose Biden, Jackson contended the president’s memory lapses were cognitive and related to his age, recommending a “full cognitive panel” instead of simply a screening test like the Montreal.
“He should not be our president or our head of state because he’s not got the cognitive wherewithal or ability to do the job,” Jackson told the Washington Examiner. “There’s tests he can take that, if he passed them, would put the country at ease, but I can tell you right now, just based on what I’ve seen, that he wouldn’t pass those tests and that’s the reason he’s not doing those tests.”
“So yeah, he needs to have his physical done,” he said. “It needs to include a battery of cognitive tests at this point. His physician, which I know, who worked for me for eight years, needs to get up in front of the press, and he needs to present the objective results, and he needs to stand up there and defend them and explain them the same way that I did for an hour and a half whenever I did Trump’s physical.”
The tests, usually undertaken by patients aged 65 and older, could comprise math problems and memory tasks to positron emission tomography scans and magnetic resonance imaging, per Jackson.
“They’re working off the old mantra, ‘Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,’” he said of the White House.
Jackson is not the only doctor turned House Republican who is criticizing Biden, citing national security. Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), a former family medicine practitioner who last year introduced a bill proposing the Constitution be amended to require that presidential candidates undergo a cognitive test, repeated that they should be compulsory for any elected official who has to have a physical.
“It’s undeniable that President Biden is in mental decline and is not fit to hold office,” DesJarlais said. “If his administration disagrees, then why not prove it by releasing the results of a standardized cognitive function test?”
DesJarlais’s bill underscores former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley‘s advocacy for term limits and a “mandatory competency test” for the same officials during the 2024 Republican presidential primary. In response to Hur’s report, the one-time South Carolina governor argued the White House is not “a taxpayer-subsidized nursing home.”
“We don’t need two 80-year-olds leading this country,” Haley campaign spokeswoman AnnMarie Graham-Barnes told the Washington Examiner of Biden and Trump, the likely Republican nominee. “America needs a new generational leader who can work eight years to get our country back on track.”
Rep. Gregory Murphy (R-NC) added that he cared for “a great deal of geriatric patients” as a urologist, whose residency also incorporated kidney transplantation.
“After viewing President Biden up close at the National Prayer breakfast, I witnessed a very fragile individual,” Murphy said. “The unsteadiness of his gait, the slowness of his movements, and the weakness of his voice speak to the fact he is in a debilitated state.”
“Not attacking the person but rather commenting upon the condition of the person,” he continued. “I disagree with his politics; his ability to be the leader of the free world is in severe doubt. Not only evidenced by what I saw but what the rest of the world obviously thinks. I do not believe he is fit to be president of the United States.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre parried questions about Biden potentially undergoing a cognitive test during his physical.
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“I remember talking to the president’s doctor last year when I was asked about a cognitive test when the president’s physical came out,” Jean-Pierre said Friday. “He said to me — and I’m paraphrasing because this was over a year ago at this point — that because of the president’s actions every day, what he deals with with world leaders, the domestic issues that he has to deal with, he believes that that shows — right? — that shows that the president is very much active and understands what’s going on — right? — and [he] didn’t believe that a test like that was warranted.”
The press secretary reiterated that Biden and the White House would once again be transparent with respect to his physical “when the time comes.”