Former aides to former President Joe Biden decided against giving him a cognitive test in early 2024 out of concern it would draw attention to his age ahead of the presidential race.
The officials apparently weren’t worried about him passing so much as whether the fact of taking the test would raise unwanted questions about his mental fitness, The New York Times reported Sunday, citing an upcoming book penned by the newspaper’s White House correspondent Tyler Pager along with his counterparts, Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf, at The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, respectively.
Scheduled for publication in July under the title “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and Democrats Lost America,” Pager, Dawsey and Arnsdorf’s book reportedly reveals how the prospective test was discussed in February 2024—just weeks before a devastating spate of public appearances that eventually led to Biden’s shock withdrawal from the race.
These included footage of him standing eerily still during a Juneteenth musical performance; confusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin; and, of course, his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June.
At the time that White House aides were discussing the prospective cognitive test in February, speculation was already mounting over Biden’s cognitive decline, with an official report on his handling of classified documents describing the then-president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
That assessment in turn prompted a backlash from Biden himself, who declared before reporters that “my memory is fine” at a late-night news conference during which he also referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the “president of Mexico.”
Senior ranking members of the Democratic Party, notably Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have since faced scrutiny about what was known about Biden’s mental acuity, and when, as well as alleged efforts to conceal his decline from the American people ahead of the November election.
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