President Joe Biden has avoided taking a simple mental evaluation because the White House wants to avoid exposing the severity of the president’s mental decline, according to Dr. Ben Carson.
Carson is the former head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under former President Trump and a highly-decorated neurosurgeon. The Yale-educated doctor said “it’s pretty obvious” watching Biden that the president’s mental acuity has fallen drastically in recent years.
“Just look at the different interviews over the years and compare the way he speaks now to the way he spoke, you know, five years ago, ten years ago. Obviously, a big decline. That’s not something that is normal,” Carson said in an interview with The Daily Wire. “There is a decline with aging and memory and various other things, but not to that degree. There is something else going on with him.”
Carson said the president could easily be evaluated for his short term memory. The White House refuses to put the president through the test, however, because Biden would likely fail.
“They’ll ask questions like, count down from 100 by 7s. They’ll ask you to name three objects, you can pick any three objects you want and tell them what they are, then they’ll ask you a whole bunch of other questions, and then they’ll say, ‘what were those three objects?’ just to test your short term memory,” Carson said, explaining the lack of rigor in the test. “They’re not difficult questions … but I can pretty much guarantee you that he wouldn’t be able to do that.”
Recent polls of Americans suggest that voters tend to agree with Carson’s observations about the president, or at least echo the doctor’s concerns. According to the results of a Deseret News/HarrisX poll released earlier this month, 63% of registered voters are concerned that the 81-year-old president is not mentally fit enough to perform the duties of a U.S. president.
In polling results from last month, Biden did not perform any better. In a Quinnipiac University poll released on February 21, 64% of registered voters said Biden was not mentally fit enough to serve a second term. Just 34% said otherwise.
In an NBC News poll from early February, three-quarters of voters, including half of Democrats, expressed concerns about the octogenarian president’s mental and physical health as he campaigns for another four years in office.
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Age and fitness have become significant issues in the 2024 presidential race. Voters have expressed concerns about Biden’s opponent, former President Donald Trump, 77, as well, though not to the same degree. In the Deseret News/HarrisX, about half of voters, 51%, expressed concern about Trump’s cognitive ability.