Joe Biden, the oldest sitting president in American history, has his routine medical examination on Wednesday, at a time when his ability to govern is raising doubts, exploited by the Republican opposition.
“I’m going (to Walter Reed hospital) for my medical examination,” he told reporters as he left the White House. This annual medical examination must be the last before the November election in which the 81-year-old Democrat is running.
The results of medical examinations carried out at this military hospital, located near Washington, will be published later today, the White House said.
In February 2023, his doctor Kevin O’Connor concluded that Joe Biden was “in good health”, “vigorous” and “fit” to fulfill his duties. He then had a “small” cancerous lesion removed from his skin.
The Democrat is running for a second term, at the end of which he would be 86 years old. He is almost guaranteed to face his predecessor Donald Trump, 77, during the vote in November.
Between the images of a president tripping on stairs and confusing remarks during speeches, Joe Biden’s ability to govern until the end of a second term raises questions within the American electorate and begins his chances of re-election.
“I know what I’m doing, dammit.”
At the beginning of February, a special prosecutor charged with investigating a case of classified documents that the American president had in his possession gave up prosecuting him, arguing, among other things, that a jury would be loath to sentence an “elderly man to the wrong memory”.
The Biden camp then denounced “gratuitous” and “inappropriate” comments. The president even hastily summoned the press to say: “I’m an old man and I know what I’m doing, damn it. I don’t have memory problems.”
Special prosecutor Robert Hur notably assured that the president had, during his interviews with him, forgotten the date of the death of his eldest son Beau.
Figures from the conservative camp then called for the implementation of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which allows the president’s functions to be terminated if the latter is no longer able to assume them.
“When we do not have the faculties required to be judged (…), we certainly do not have the faculties required to be in the Oval Office,” asserted the leader of the Republican elected representatives in the House , Mike Johnson.
Trump, “the other guy”
Donald Trump, almost assured of winning the Republican Party nomination for November, nicknames his Republican opponent “Sleepy Joe” but does not make his age his main line of attack.
“Biden is not too old, he is too incompetent!” wrote the former president on February 14, who himself is not free from slips of the tongue or confusion in his speeches.
The current president, during a television interview on Monday, defended himself by claiming to be more solid “than the other guy”, Donald Trump, four years his junior.
On November 20, the day Joe Biden celebrated his 81st birthday, the Republican published a short letter from his doctor affirming that he was in “excellent” health, having lost weight – without specifying how much – and that the results of his cognitive tests were “exceptional.”
In an NBC poll, 76% of voters surveyed said they were concerned about Joe Biden’s physical and mental capacity to serve a second term, compared to only 48% for Donald Trump.
