Medical professionals have stepped up calls for President Biden to take a mental competency test after Thursday’s blistering report from special counsel Robert Hur revealed the 81-year-old can’t remember basic facts about his own life and career.
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The Hur report, released Thursday, assessed Biden as too senile to be prosecuted over his wrongful retention of classified documents and noted the commander-in-chief “did not remember when he was vice president” and “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died” over two days of interviews in October.
“Something isn’t right, and even if it’s minor, it must be explained to the public,” Dr. Stuart Fischer, a primary care physician at a nursing home in the Bronx, told The Post.
“The horse is out of the barn. Not only does [Biden] have an infirmity of some degree, but he has delayed producing objective evidence,” the internal medicine expert added, arguing that “no one is buying” the president’s defenses about his memory.
Despite being the oldest president in US history, Biden has refused to take mental acuity tests despite repeated calls to do so from his critics — as well as consistent polling showing a majority of Americans share those concerns.
The results of Biden’s most recent physical exam, released by the White House in February of last year, described the chief executive as “fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency,” but made no mention of a cognitive test or an assessment of his mental fitness.
On Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed to reporters that she had talked to White House physician Kevin O’Connor around that time and he had told her 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 — that shows that the president is very much active and understands what’s going on and [O’Connor] didn’t believe a test like that was warranted because of, just who he is as president of the United States and everything he has to deal with.
“But again, I’m not a medical doctor,” the press secretary added.
However, according to Fischer, Biden has “signs of symptoms” that could indicate he suffers from “infectious disease or fatigue,” though the physician stressed that he is not Biden’s doctor and his statements did not constitute a diagnosis.
“I don’t know how this man can have anything more than a mild schedule,” added the doc, “because the more he pushes himself, the more difficult it is for an 81-year-old body to respond.”
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a physician to both former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump and a member of the White House Medical Unit under President George W. Bush, told The Post that if Biden clinches the Democratic presidential nomination, he should “100%” have to submit to a mental competency test before the general election.
“He doesn’t need a [cognitive] screening test,” Jackson said. “He needs an actual cognitive battery of tests, objectively done, put on paper, and briefed to the American people by his physician.”