President Joe Biden, 81, didn’t mention any concerns about his heatlh or divulge additional details about why he suddenly dropped out of the 2024 presidential race during his 11-minute Oval Office address.
The clearest he got to an explanation was that he didn’t want ‘ambition’ to get in the way of his goal of ‘saving’ democracy – coded language for not wanting to see former President Donald Trump win another term.
Biden’s formal address comes 28 days after his disastrous debate performance that put his reelection bid in peril.
During the Atlanta showdown against Trump, Biden appeared confused, mumbled his words, as the White House tried attributing it to a bad night and the president having a cold.
But soon a number of reports came out suggesting that the president had been deteriorating for several months.
President Joe Biden didn’t mention any concerns about his health during his Oval Office address to the nation Wednesday night
Actor George Clooney wrote an op-ed for The New York Times saying the Biden he met at a June fundraiser ‘was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.’
Clooney encouraged the president to bow out.
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a fellow Democrat, said Biden didn’t seem to recognize who he was when they met in Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day in June.
Republicans blamed a White House ‘cover-up’ of the president’s health.
Biden didn’t make things easier when he refused, during a post-debate sit-down with George Stephanopoulos, to get additional medical testing done, including a fresh cognitive exam.
The White House said that a neurologist had studied Biden in mid-January and results were released with his annual physical in February.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also bungled the initial response to a New York Post story that said a Parkinson’s expert had visited the White House.
President Joe Biden is photographed arriving in Dover, Delaware last Wednesday after he tested positive for COVID-19. The positive test came after he told BET News that a ‘medical condition’ might push him out of the 2024 race
That expert, Jean-Pierre later clarified, was on-campus as the neurologist attending to the president’s annual exam.
Biden initially said only ‘God, almighty’ would have him stand down from running for reelection.
Last Wednesday, during a pre-taped interview with BET News, the president said he would drop out ‘if I had some medical condition that emerged.’
‘If doctors came to me and said, “You’ve got this problem, that problem,”‘ he added.
Hours later, the president tested positive for COVID, making a hasty flight back from the campaign trail in Las Vegas to Delaware, where he wasn’t seen publicly for six days.
During that time he made the announcement that he would back away from his 2024 plans.
Still, the White House would never budge and say Biden’s decision had anything to do with his declining health.
When Biden’s youngest brother Frank told CBS Sunday that he believed part of the president’s decision to quit the campaign was health-related, a source to the family lashed out.
‘Frank Biden suffers from alcoholism and hasn’t spoken to his brother in weeks. What he said…is completely untrue,’ the source said.
During Wednesday’s briefing, Jean-Pierre also pushed that explanation aside.
‘It has nothing to do with his health,’ she said. ‘I can say, no, that’s not the reason.’