Everything’s fine
Joe Biden’s doctor met with a leading Washington neurologist at the White House this year, it was reported on Saturday.
The report came after Biden on Friday ruled out taking an independent cognitive test and releasing its findings publicly, in an interview with ABC News arranged following his disastrous performance in last week’s presidential TV debate with Donald Trump.
According to White House visitor logs reviewed by the New York Post, Dr Kevin Cannard, a Parkinson’s disease expert at Walter Reed medical center, met with Dr Kevin O’Connor, a doctor of osteopathic medicine who has treated the president for years.
Biden refuses to take a cognitive test.
Later in the broadcast, Biden was asked if he would do an independent neurological and cognitive exam and release the results. “I get a cognitive test every day,” Biden said. “Everything I do – you know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.”
No no no no no that’s not how that works. Also are you aware that you’re not running the world?
He did two radio interviews in which the White House wrote the questions and ordered the interviewers not to ask any other questions. The interviews were to demonstrate how brilliant he is.
[T]he eight visits Kevin Cannard has made to the White House over the past 11 months are certain to raise further questions about the 81-year-old president’s mental abilities in the wake of his debate with Donald Trump and subsequent verbal mistakes, including during a radio interview on Thursday when he said he was “proud” to be the “first Black woman to serve with a Black president”.
So he’s trans now?
We are so so so screwed.
But believable in part. He is running his world; the clearly ever-diminishing one inside his head. So give him credit at least for that.
If it turns out Biden’s doctor and his inner circle have known since last year that he’s got dementia or some kind of neurological disease and they kept it secret, that’d be a new low of horribleness. We could have had a full extra year to prepare an alternative candidate to defeat Trump.
And if it turns out to be true that they’ve known about it for over a year, not only did they put the election at risk, they would presumably have tried to keep him in the Oval Office for four more years after he won (if he won), all the while keeping his diagnosis a secret.
I really can’t think of any reason why the President’s doctor would be arranging monthly visits with a neurlogical specialist — monthly visits, not just one information session or a check-up — unless there was a diagnosis of a serious neurological problem with the President.
What a disaster.
I agree that it’s highly unlikely that Biden is seeing a neurologist for giggles. Hell, I have multiple health issues, see multiple consultants, and none of them monthly; not even my GP sees me that often!
Of course, Trump is even worse; but that’s not the issue here. If Biden had an ounce of integrity, he’d step down. Hell, if he had a gramme of self-respect he’d step down, if only to preserve some shred of his reputation.
Wait… the president’s doctor is an osteopath? Isn’t that a, uh, contested field of medicine?
I’m not sure. I looked it up while writing the post and it’s not a homeopathy type thing as far as I can tell.
Osteopaths undergo training very similar to that of MDs. They can prescribe medicine and perform surgery. Some people prefer that route because they find it more hands-on and patient centered than standard medicine. There are wacky aspects to what osteopaths is supposedly based on, like manipulation therapy, and some (many? most?) DOs don’t believe in or bother with it.
It is perhaps like chiropractors who mostly do massage and assessment of bone structure, and don’t claim to cure diseases.
My doctor is a DO. She’s wonderful. I spoke with an MD relative, and she expressed no reservations at all for seeing a DO. The medical practice I use has a mix of MDs and DOs.
#4 Arcadia
Apparently in USA, the term is more likely being used to refer to doctors with actual qualifications that scarcely differ from the standard path of doctor training, the MD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathic_medicine_in_the_United_States
Oh and as to the actual topic, at this stage I am confident that even if he wins, Kamala Harris will finish out the term. Which is fine, because even a bag of diseased offal would be a better president than the alternative.
And it is beyond tragic that I have to qualify the above with that if. If he had had less ego, or if the party establishment were less craven, there could have been any number of more inspiring candidates than him and I could be almost cheerful about their prospects, had they a full term of campaigning behind them.
I haven’t figured out how to copy links from Bluesky yet, but it turns out the Doctor was visiting someone else assigned as a liaison to their institution. All of the visits bar one were early morning, not with Biden. For one visit that occurred later Biden wasn’t even at the White House. What’s more, the NYT new all of this before publishing the story implying that the visits were to assess or treat Biden.
Note, Biden signed the End Parkinsons Act on 6th July. Another link not drawn by the NYT.