Few outside the White House would know Kevin O’Connor, President Joe Biden’s doctor
As the physician to President Joe Biden, Dr. Kevin O’Connor is well-known around the White House. The stocky former Army surgeon is always close by his number one patient, ready to provide care or a consult as needed though few outside the building would know who he is.
But Biden’s politically crippling debate performance changed all that. Ensuing and uncomfortable questions about the 81-year-old Democratic president’s mental and physical capacity to serve a second four-year term have thrust O’Connor into the spotlight.
In February, just four months before the disastrous debate, O’Connor had overseen Biden’s most recent physical exam and wrote in a public memo that the president “continues to be fit for duty and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations.” The White House said Tuesday that the doctor’s assessment still stands.
But some Republican lawmakers now want the man Biden simply calls “doc” to come to Capitol Hill to answer their questions about the president’s health and medical care. There are also questions about why he hasn’t pushed his patient — the president — to undergo cognitive testing.
And on Monday, after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre cited privacy for refusing to discuss why a neurologist who has conducted research into Parkinson’s disease had visited the complex eight times between July 2023 and this past March, it was O’Connor who later stepped in to clear things up.
He released a letter late Monday explaining that the doctor, Kevin Cannard, is a neurologist who evaluated Biden during each of the three physical exams he’s had since taking office in 2021. O’Connor said Cannard also treats others at the White House, explaining his occasional presence there.
O’Connor and Biden have a close relationship dating back over a decade.
After more than two decades in the Army, O’Connor joined the White House Medical Unit at the invitation of then-President George W.
