Speaking to a reporter on the tarmac after landing in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, May 29, current President Joe Biden refused to say whether he will serve a full four-year term if he manages to be reelected in November, or if he plans on stepping aside for someone younger given his advanced age and rumored senility.
As background, the questions about Biden’s age and mental competence come after the release of the Hur Report showed that Biden is at least somewhat lacking in mental faculties and struggles with his memory, a fact that raised many concerns from the American public about whether he is fit for office, particularly a second term given his already quite advanced age and apparent mental issues.
One part of the Hur report, for example, provides, “In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”), He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”
Giving yet more examples of his mental shortcomings, it added, “Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama. In a case where the government must prove that Mr. Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice presidency and chose to keep those documents, knowing he was violating the law, we expect that at trial, his attorneys would emphasize these limitations in his recall.”
And so his age came up again when he landed in Pennsylvania, campaigning in the Keystone State for the seventh time in 2024. It came in the form of an embarrassing question posed by a reporter while he stood with supporters for a tarmac photo. The reporter asked, “President Biden, will you be serving your full four-year term or handing over power to Vice President Harris?”
Biden, snippily responding in quite a rude way, fired back, “You’re not hurt, are you?” The reporter, politely replying despite President Biden’s rude response, said, “I can’t hear you. Can you approach?” Biden, angrily responding with a fuming face and terse reply, snapped back by asking, “Did you fall on your head or something?”
Watch the incident here:
After the incident, Biden stumbled through his speech at Girard College in Pennsylvania, saying, in part, “I promised to put racial equality at the center of everything I do because I vowed I would have an administration that looked like America. Because you voted, we’re invested more money than ever in the Black families and communities. A promise made and a promise kept. I promised we’d start to reconnect Black and brown and overlooked neighborhoods cut off by highways in the ‘60s and decades of disinvestment as a consequence of it, including here in Philly. But we’re — changed that with the Recovery Act of — with the — in the — right now you see all the construction going on on the highways around here. A promise made and a promise kept.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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