The oldest serving president in American history, Joe Biden underwent his routine medical examination on Wednesday, at a time when his ability to govern is raising doubts, exploited by the Republican opposition.
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In the morning he spent two and a half hours at the Walter Reed military hospital, in the suburbs of Washington, for this annual medical examination, the last before the November election in which the 81-year-old Democrat is running.
Test results will be released later today, the White House said.
Doctors “think I look too young,” joked Joe Biden, when questioned by journalists about this medical assessment.
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.
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“Bad memory”
At the beginning of February, a special prosecutor responsible for investigating a case of classified documents that the American president had in his possession gave up prosecuting him, explaining, 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 any memory problems.
This special prosecutor assured in particular 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 representatives, Mike Johnson.
Trump, “the other guy”
Donald Trump, almost assured of winning the Republican Party nomination for November, nicknames his opponent “Sleepy Joe” and continues to make fun of his hesitant approach.
“Biden is not too old, he is too incompetent!”, also wrote on February 14 the former president, who is not himself 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, Donald Trump published a short letter from his doctor affirming that he was in “excellent” health, that he had lost weight – without specifying how much – and that the His cognitive test results 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.
