Ex-White House Physician Baselessly Questions Biden’s Mental Acuity
When Ronny Jackson was chief White House physician and tended to Donald Trump in 2018 he made the laughably absurd declaration that the sedentary, morbidly obese chief executive was in “excellent” health. He boasted that Trump had gotten a perfect score on a cognitive mental health test because he was able to repeat the five words person, woman, man, camera, TV in the correct order.
Now Jackson is a hyper-partisan, Trump-loving Republican member of Congress and has spent exactly zero time with President Joe Biden. So it’s probably his voter registration card and not his medical license – if he even still retains one – that caused the Texas freshman to lead a group of 14 GOP lawmakers to send Biden a letter demanding that take a cognitive test to measure his mental acuity. The letter claims that Biden has exhibited signs of a poor mental state.
“The American people deserve to have absolute confidence in their President,” said Jackson. In a news release Jackson stated, “I would argue that the American people don’t have that confidence in President Biden.”
Jackson’s baseless assertion is a continuation of Trump’s attacks on Biden’s mental sharpness in the 2020 presidential campaign. Since leaving his White House job in 2018 the former Navy officer was found by the Defense Department’s inspector general to have bullied and intimidated staff, made inappropriate sexual remarks and consumed alcohol several times while he was supposed to be on duty.
Biden, the oldest president in history, is due to have a physical later this year. He has pledged to fully release the results, which was something Trump never did either during his campaign on during his term in office.
Doctors last year who reviewed Biden’s medical history and current state do not agree with Jackson’s uninformed assessment. Stuart Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago who analyzes the longevity of presidents, told The Washington Post that Biden’s health and family history suggest a life expectancy of about 97.
“You can’t sugarcoat aging. Once you get up to that age, changes do occur more rapidly than when you’re younger,” Olshansky said. “But with Biden, not only are there not warning signs, the signs that you see show he’s in exceptional health.”