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OPINION NATIONAL

We Need To Talk About Joe Biden’s Cognitive Decline

Former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden speaking with attendees at the 2020 Iowa State Education Association (ISEA) Legislative Conference at the Sheraton West Des Moines Hotel in West Des Moines, Iowa. Date: 18 January 2020, 09:17 Source: Joe Biden Author: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America

“At a certain point there needs to be a serious and empathetic conversation about Biden’s relatively frequent, confused, irritable inability to complete coherent thoughts. It’s not about a stutter. Watching him speak a mere four years ago makes that clear.”

Joe Biden’s clear mental decline needs to be discussed with openness and compassion, not only because President Trump has brandished the uncomfortable issue as a primary line of attack against the Democratic front runner, but because the president must be able to handle the rigors of leading a nation.

The former Vice President’s cognitive problems are frequently dismissed as “gaffes” by commentators, but Biden has repeatedly demonstrated the textbook symptoms of dementia, including memory problems, increased confusion, reduced concentration, and rapid mood changes.

 

To be fair, President Trump has also faced scrutiny concerning his own cognitive decline, with 350 mental health professionals sending a letter to Congress warning that his mental state was deteriorating in December. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is 78, also had a heart attack in October, and whoever the next president is, they will be the oldest in United States history. But while Trump and Sanders have already faced questions about their physical fitness for office, the former Vice President’s condition has so far evaded real media scrutiny.

Biden displayed far greater ease articulating complex thoughts as recently as 2016, as demonstrated by his cogent analysis of the last Democratic primary:

Progressive writers Glenn Greenwald and Matt Stoller have criticized establishment Democrats for pushing forward a candidate who is in clear cognitive decline.

Trump frequently mocks Biden’s cognitive problems, calling him “Sleepy Joe” and recently saying, “They’re going to put him into a home and other people are going to be running the country,” at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday.

“Tomorrow, voters in states across the nation for Super Tuesday — not Super Thursday. Oh, he said Super Thursday! You can’t do these things. Can you imagine if I said Super Thursday? I would be over, right? I would be over,” Trump said at the rally, calling Biden’s mistakes “a little scary.”

Pro-Trump commentators like Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson have begun to bring attention to Biden’s deteriorating mental condition and speculated what role it would play in a general election:

“I think contrary to what a lot of people think, I think Trump and Trump supporters, like me, if we want Trump to win reelection, I think Biden is a much better bet,” Coulter told Breitbart in an interview on Tuesday. “Bernie … has a lot of appealing populist issues. He may be some nut Fidel Castro-admirer, but he’s funny. He draws huge crowds. The media will protect Biden in a way that no Republican with that level of senile dementia that Biden has could run for president, but the media is a powerful force. They’ll cover it up, they won’t show us those.”

 

Republican talk show host Bob Lonsberry similarly pointed out what he described as dementia in the former Vice President, arguing that he should be treated with “honor and care” rather than used in the “obvious efforts by the party’s closeted leadership to hand him the nomination.”

“I’m not trying to sandbag Biden to protect the interests of my party or candidate,” Lonsberry wrote in an op-ed on Tuesday.

“I am merely saying what we all are thinking. The man is out on his feet. Look at his eyes. He’s not always all there. And in that situation, for any person, you don’t push them forward to achieve your political ends, you put your arm around them and get them help. Empathy and concern for Joe Biden don’t express themselves as support for his decades-long ambition to be president. They manifest as a desire to protect him and the nation from the degrading of his abilities.”

 

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Peter Castagno

Peter Castagno is a co-owner Citizen Truth.

11 Comments

  1. Larry Stout March 6, 2020

    Biden is unfit to be president, but then so are all the others, including Trump. We may note, too, that Dubya sat in the Oval Office for eight long years while wreaking havoc in the world, having very little in the way of something cognitive to decline from.

    Reply
    1. Denis F March 6, 2020

      The Democrats DO have another candidate still in the race; he supports the party platform, and the majority of Americans (not just Democrats – ALL Americans) support over 90% of his policies. He is sharp, on the ball, perceptive and factual in his analyses and responses. Even better, the same modeling method that predicted Trump beating Clinton, gives him a 97% win probability against Trump.

      Most parties would dream to have a candidate with those attributes – instead of trying to foist a someone clearly in rapid mental decline.

  2. Denis F March 6, 2020

    I remember Biden eight years ago debating Ryan – he was sharp, focused and quick. That mental capacity is how I would like to remember him – not the bumbling verbal gaffe accident prone clown that he has become – it is sad.

    Reply
  3. Fred Lundgren March 7, 2020

    JOE BIDEN IS THE CHOSEN ONE

    Supporters of Bernie Sanders must face it and deal with it, but we should not give up silently and watch it happen. Also, if Warren was the true progressive she claimed to be, she would have endorsed Bernie immediately when she suspended her campaign. Let’s get beyond it and continue to play the hand we are dealt.

    We should not feel any anger toward Joe personally. He won the lottery. He is simply the chosen candidate of the establishment. It was inevitable. Someone had to be chosen to take down Bernie Sanders before it was too late and they almost waited too long.
    When they gave voters the “go ahead signal”, the winds of the primary changed directions. We must admit it, THAT’S POWER!!!
    Sadly, we don’t have an immediate counter punch without Warren’s endorsement. If the next debate had been scheduled before the next group of primaries, we would have a better chance, but six more States will vote before the March 15th debate. I am worried that the Sanders campaign can’t impact Biden’s momentum before that crucial debate.
    It’s clear that progressives are getting screwed over again. With that in mind, I have a few prognostications to offer that hopefully, will keep us motivated.
    If elected, Joe will return us to the “normal” of the Obama years which will guarantee an administration that nibbles around the edges of big problems without offending any oligarchs or plutocrats while the American middle class continues it’s steady decline.
    America will find new wars of aggression to wage in order to satisfy the soulless, insatiable demands of the military-Industrial complex.
    All the bad seeds planted by Trump will continue to grow if they assist the establishment’s demand for more wealth concentration.
    Pot will remain federally illegal, private prisons will continue, prison camps filled with undocumented immigrants will be justified and nothing will be done about immigration reform.
    Cash bail will continue, the minimum wage will remain low enough to guarantee billions in corporate welfare, the big drug companies will continue to rip us off while people without medical care will die at the rate of 35,000 to 50,000 a year.
    It will happen if Trump gets re-elected or if Biden is elected. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who stands against the massive assault that is destroying the middle class.

    Sadly, Bernie’s chances of winning are decreasing daily as Americans are once again, convinced to vote against our own best interests.

    Reply
  4. Larry Stout March 8, 2020

    “If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”

    — HL Mencken

    Reply
  5. ABHIJIT V KHANVALKAR March 8, 2020

    Bloomberg was the best option to beat trump.

    Reply
  6. AffirmativeActionMonkey March 11, 2020

    They drilled far too deep when inserting Biden’s hair plugs.

    Reply
  7. Paul K March 19, 2020

    There are rumors within the DNC that Biden may have to pick a VP prior to the convention, due to the dementia issue and if it gets any coverage. Which it won’t because the media is covering for Joe Biden, and they created “Joementum” – there is none. Biden held a rally in Michigan recently where when you subtracted the press, the warm up speaker and their people and Biden’s campaign staff – about 30 voters showed up. Bernie Sanders held a rally nearby and a huge crowd showed up, I don’t know how many but it was a lot – check it out on you tube. The other thing the media is ignoring is the double digit differences in most States between the EXIT Polls* and the election results, all of which, always favor Biden. It is clear the DNC is stealing the primary race from Bernie Sanders by rigging the voting machines and/or tallying of the votes ie. a lot of Sanders votes are being changed to Biden’s. Also there is voter suppression going on when 750 polling places were closed in Texas in certain areas and the long, waiting times from 3 to 7 hours. Same in California and other states wash, rinse and repeat.

    We need to switch back to paper ballots – it still works fine in all of Canada. Or, polling places need to count each paper receipt from the voting machines (and any other paper ballots) even if it means the election results don’t come until midnight.

    *The UN states that if the difference between EXIT polls and election results are 4% or greater, the election is invalid. And needs to be redone.

    Reply
  8. Paul K March 21, 2020

    Well initially the Joementum was fabricated by the media, but perhaps now some voters need a paternal figure to get us through the Corona virus pandemic, and/or now that Biden seems to be winning (see above) they have anti-Trump insanity as in any Blue will do, or feel Sanders isn’t… When just a few weeks ago, Biden was way down, and 65 out of 70 polls showed Bernie Sanders best to beat Trump or at least have a chance to out of all of them. The Democratic establishment’s No 1 priority is to stop Bernie. If it means 4 more years of Trump so be it. They would rather have Donald Trump as president than Sanders.

    There’s your resistance. It’s phony. Nancy Pelosi makes a show at tearing up Trump’s speech at the State of the Union, but when he rolls out Juan Guaido the designated US puppet in Venezuela, she rises up and claps right along. The tearing up of the speech is just theater like a WWE wrestling move. Actually the entire event is theater. Pelosi gave Trump money for his wall, a campaign promise he intended to go through with and needed. Pelosi went along with the $1.5 Trillion tax cut which 86% of went to the 1% (and every little cut Trump makes in social programs, the EPA. the CDC, or higher tariffs on China, etc is in order to offset the massive tax cut). And when they say we have to cut Social Security – remember that’s FALSE – because Social Security has nothing to do with greater Deficits – because it is funded directly by worker tax dollars.

    Reply
  9. grover r kassel May 2, 2020

    upon examining the mental quality of our presidents, of the last 20 years. i can t imagine why anyone bothers to vote. send them a message, don t vote anymore. stop enabling these hucksters and flimflam men. you re vote is destroying our country.

    Reply

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