OPINION:
Anyone hoping George Stephanopoulos’ interview of President Biden on ABC News would allay the growing fears of Democrats that the president is not mentally fit to serve another four years must be disappointed.
When asked repeatedly and in different ways if he would take an independent neurological exam, Mr. Biden refused, claiming he is mentally fit and doesn’t need a test because he is tested “every day” and his test is “running the world.” The world is in bad shape, with wars and rumors of wars. Does he take the blame? Apparently not.
Things are so bad that the Biden campaign was forced to admit it provided eight questions to radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders of “The Source” on WURD before her interview with the president.
In that interview, Mr. Biden accidentally stated he was “the first Black woman to serve in the White House.” In 1998, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison wrote in The New Yorker that Bill Clinton was America’s “first Black president” because of life experiences he shared with many Black people. That was said about Mr. Clinton. He didn’t claim a different racial or gender background.
If Mr. Biden’s mental health is fine and assertions to the contrary are untrue, the quickest way to resolve the issue is to take a test. Not to do so suggests the president is covering up something potentially serious. The New York Post reported that according to White House visitor logs, a top Parkinson’s disease specialist in Washington met with the president’s personal physician earlier this year. What was that about? Silence from those who know.
It gets worse. Politico reports diplomats and world leaders preparing for this week’s NATO summit “are privately expressing acute concern about President Joe Biden’s age, health and ability to win the 2024 presidential election. These foreign officials largely favor Biden’s re-election and fear that Donald Trump’s return to office would damage the NATO alliance and cripple the war effort in Ukraine. But they have reacted to Biden’s recent debate performance with dismay and fear that Biden may be too frail to defeat Trump and lead a global superpower.”
That pretty much sums up the concerns of increasing numbers of Democrats. How long will it be before we see a replay of that Republican Senate delegation that went to the White House in 1974 and told President Richard Nixon he had lost the support of Congress and would be impeached and removed from office?
There are plenty of nonsensical examples of Mr. Biden’s inability to speak coherently. Consider this one excerpt from the Stephanopoulos interview in response to his debate performance: “The whole way I prepared, nobody’s fault mine. Nobody’s fault but mine. … I, uh, prepared what I usually would do, sitting down as I did, come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail. And I realized about partway through that, you know, I quoted The New York Times had me down 10 points before the debate, 9 now or whatever the hell it is. The fact of the matter is that what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn’t, I mean, the way the debate ran, not — my fault, no one else’s fault — no one else’s fault.”
Not even Google Translate could figure that one out. And it’s not just his mental state but his policies, chief of which is the open border, which, according to a recent Center for Immigration Studies poll, is the top issue for most voters in this election.
For the sake of his family, himself, and especially the country, President Biden should have an immediate cognitive test performed by an independent physician, and complete results should be released to the public. Anything less — or nothing at all — is unacceptable and puts the nation in danger by a president who increasingly appears incapable of fully performing his duties.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).
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