Biden ‘continues to be fit for duty,’ doctor says after annual exam
BETHESDA, Md. — President Biden “continues to be fit for duty,” his doctor wrote Wednesday after conducting an annual physical that was closely watched as he runs for reelection.
“President Biden is a healthy, active, robust, 81-year-old male who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency,” Dr. Kevin O’Connor wrote in a six-page memo on the president’s health, after a physical that took Biden to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for more than 2½ hours.
The memo added that Biden “feels well and this year’s physical identifies no new concerns.”
The oldest president in U.S. history, Biden would be 86 by the end of a second term should he win one. After his last exam, performed in February 2023, doctors declared Biden “healthy, vigorous” and “fit” to handle his White House duties. But many voters are approaching this year’s election with misgivings about Biden’s age, with media attention having focused on his gaffes, his coughing, his slow walking and even a tumble off his bicycle.
After he returned to the White House, Biden attended an event on combating crime and suggested that when it came to his health, “there is nothing different than last year.”
He also joked about his age, gesturing toward the assembled press corps and telling police leaders at the gathering, “They think I look too young.”
Biden said in a local Michigan radio interview Monday that it would be ‘one of the five states’ that would determine the winner in November.
Former President Trump, 77, is the favorite for the Republican nomination, which would bring him closer to a November rematch against Biden. Trump was 70 when he took office in 2017, which made him the oldest American president to be inaugurated, until Biden broke his record by being inaugurated at 78 in 2021.
A recent special counsel’s report on the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents repeatedly derided Biden’s memory, calling it “hazy,” “fuzzy,” “faulty,” “poor” and having “significant limitations.” It also said that Biden could not recall defining milestones in his own life such as when his son Beau died or when he served as vice president. The president and his aides have rejected those assertions.
Addressing reporters the evening of the report’s release, Biden said that “my memory is fine” and grew visibly angry as he denied the claim he forgot when his son died of brain cancer in 2015, saying that he paused in responding about the matter because he was offended at the question about a painful personal matter.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that O’Connor was one of a team of 20 medical specialists who helped complete the physical and told her he “was happy with how everything went.”
Asked why he wasn’t undergoing a cognitive test as part of the physical, Jean-Pierre said that O’Connor and Biden’s neurologist “don’t believe he needs one.”
“He passes a cognitive test every day, every day as he moves from one topic to another topic, understanding the granular level of these topics,” Jean-Pierre said, noting that Biden tackled such diverse issues as Wednesday’s crime prevention event before his planned trip to the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday and next week’s State of the Union address.
“This is a very rigorous job,” she added, “and the president has been able to do this job every day for the past three years.”
Biden’s last physical showed that the president had a lesion removed from his chest over the previous year, but the results then otherwise largely matched the findings after Biden’s previous exam in November 2021. That report said his occasional coughing was due to acid reflux, while his stiffened gait was the result of spinal arthritis, a previously broken foot and neuropathy in his feet.
The White House also announced last summer that Biden had begun using a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine at night to help with sleep apnea — which O’Connor noted in Wednesday’s report.
Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s New York hush-money criminal case have asked a judge to impose a gag order on the former president.
The president had a colonoscopy in 2021, in which a 3-millimeter “benign-appearing polyp” was identified and removed.
Many Americans, including Democrats, have expressed reservations about Biden’s age as he seeks reelection. Only 37% of Democrats say Biden should pursue reelection, down from 52% before the 2022 midterm elections, according to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Biden counters that his age brings wisdom, and he has begun to criticize Trump for the former president’s recent public gaffes.
Trump has had his own share of verbal miscues, mixing up the city and state where he was campaigning, and calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban the leader of Turkey. More recently, he confused his Republican primary rival Nikki Haley with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
While he was president, Trump’s annual physical in 2019 revealed that he had gained weight and was up to 243 pounds. With his 6-foot, 3-inch frame, that meant Trump’s body mass index was 30.4. An index rating of 30 is the level at which doctors consider someone obese under this commonly used formula.
Weissert reported from Washington.
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