President Joe Biden said his annual medical examination had gone well Wednesday, joking that doctors thought he looked too young even as scrutiny increases over the 81-year-old’s age ahead of November’s US election.
The White House said a summary of the test results from the Walter Reed military medical facility outside Washington would be released later in the day, with the outcome closely followed for details about America’s oldest ever leader.
“They think I look too young,” Biden told reporters when asked if the medical exam had raised any concerns ahead of a likely rematch with 77-year-old Donald Trump in November.
“No, there is nothing different from last year,” when his exam said he was fit for duty, Biden added after an event at the White House. “Everything’s great.”
Biden took a short helicopter ride to the medical center that is often used by US presidents and left after just over two and a half hours, saluting naval staff and donning sunglasses before leaving in his motorcade.
The White House said Biden’s longtime doctor Kevin O’Connor was “happy with how everything went”, adding that the assessment had involved a team of 20 physicians.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended Biden not taking a cognitive test, saying it was the assessment of his doctors that the president did not need one.
“The president passes again a cognitive test every day,” Jean-Pierre told reporters, citing the domestic and international political issues he dealt with. “This is a very rigorous job.”
Biden’s routine medical exam comes as voter concerns mount over the age of a leader who would be 86 at the end of a second term in office.
– ‘The other guy’ –
The issue was thrust further into the spotlight this month when a brutal special counsel report portrayed Biden as elderly and forgetful, giving ammunition to his Republican rivals.
The investigation cleared him of illegally retaining classified documents in his home and garage — but said he would come across to a jury as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden launched a fiery counterattack in a press conference at the White House, saying his memory was “fine” and slamming the special counsel for claiming he could not remember when his son Beau died of cancer.
But this week Biden took a more lighthearted tone while trying to deflect the issue back onto his septuagenarian nemesis Trump.
In an interview with late-night TV comic Seth Meyers on Monday, Biden said he was a better bet than “the other guy,” who is only four years younger.
In last year’s medical exam Biden got a clean bill of health, although he did have a cancerous skin lesion removed from his chest.
“President Biden remains a healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency,” O’Connor said following Biden’s medical examination in 2023.
Trump routinely depicts Biden as pathetically old, decrepit and unfit for office — despite being nearly the same age and raising eyebrows with a series of verbal gaffes and memory issues of his own.
The real estate tycoon recently confused his rival Republican Nikki Haley with Democratic former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and said Viktor Orban was president of Turkey, rather than Hungary.
Late last year, Trump released a note from his doctor declaring him to be in “excellent” health, but it was short on details and did not say what tests Trump had undergone when he had a physical in September 2023.
The letter said the results of his cognitive exams were “exceptional” but did not disclose basic information such as Trump’s height and weight, cholesterol level or blood pressure.
– Danny KEMP
© 2024 AFP
