Congressional lawmakers have every reason to demand access to President Joe Biden’s medical records.
The days since the first presidential debate, which featured Joe Biden making a series of incoherent and rambling remarks, have drawn increased attention to the 25th Amendment and Biden’s constitutional fitness to remain in office. Rep. Chip Roy has pointed out that only Vice President Kamala Harris can start the process for invoking the amendment’s provisions regarding presidential incapacity.
But Congress has a role too. Lawmakers have every reason to demand access to Biden’s medical records. Doing so would provide more clarity on the president’s current mental state and shed some light on how the White House staff — not to mention a complicit media — have shielded a diminished chief executive from public scrutiny.Troubling Interview
Put aside Biden’s physical appearance in his Friday interview with George Stephanopoulos. Likewise, set aside the emotional, even tragic, circumstances of a president having to do an interview for the sole purpose of defending his mental competency or Biden’s seeming denial of the dire political situation he faces.
While Biden looked more lucid and coherent in his interview Friday than in the debate, his memory still failed him on several occasions within a 22-minute question-and-answer session. He could not recall whether he watched a replay of last week’s debate — the very reason why he had to do the interview in the first place. He couldn’t remember that Stephanopoulos worked for Bill Clinton, searching in vain for the specific president’s name and then settling for the more generic “in the government.” And he got confused about the polls that have him significantly trailing Donald Trump.
Particularly after last week’s debate, these repeated incidents in a relatively short interview do not inspire confidence in the current president’s condition, let alone his potential condition four years hence.
