White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded to the debate once it ended last Thursday by asserting that Biden does not have Alzheimer’s, nor any other form of dementia.
“Does President Biden, at 81 years old, have Alzheimer’s, any form of dementia or degenerative illness that cause these sorts of lapses? And it’s a yes or no question,” a reporter asked Jean-Pierre on Tuesday afternoon.
“Are you ready for it? It’s a no. And I hope you’re asking the other guy the same exact question,” Jean-Pierre answered.
It took less than 24 hours after Biden’s debate performance for mounting pleas to surface from Democrats and media calling for the president to retire due to his seemingly diminished mental capacity. Throughout the debate Biden stuttered and lost his train of thought as well as had a raspy voice.
Worries over Biden’s physical and mental state have been going on for years, with a trove of reinforcing evidence recently unearthed in the Special Counsel report by Robert Hur that described Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The White House last month dismissed multiple videos online of Biden stumbling or fumbling while he attended public events as “cheap fakes,” including a viral clip showing the president virtually standing still during an outdoor Juneteenth concert event at the White House.
Jean-Pierre doubled down on the “low-rated fraud” during a press conference, insisting that the administration continues to keep faith in it as debate over the president’s mental health resurged among traditional liberal allies.
“Not at all, not at all,” she answered when Jacqui Heinrich asked if the administration regretted using the terminology. “… Independent, mainstream fact-checkers in the press and misinformation experts have been calling out cheap fakes. And at the end of the day, they’re fakes. That’s what they were – targeting the president. They have said, the reporters and these misinformation experts, said that this president was being targeted. And what we did was echo them. That’s what we did. And look, we’ll certainly continue to call that out.”
Jean-Pierre stressed that she did not come up with the term, and that it was directly adopted from what had been reported in the media.
“That came from the media. They called it cheap fakes. And they said this president, President Biden, was being targeted on misinformation. It was purposefully being done to this president. And what we did is we echoed that. So, I don’t regret it at all. It was just the facts.”
The Trump campaign last week called for an apology over the line, asserting that Biden’s decline was “nothing fake” after his debate showing.
“The Biden White House and entire Democrat Party are both directly implicated in the greatest coverup (sic) in U.S. political history – and the mainstream media is complicit in their lies to the American public about Joe Biden’s mental state,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital last week. “They owe an apology to not just our campaign, but more importantly to the American people, for this major scandal that has led to the demise of our country over the past four years.”
During Tuesday’s briefing, most questions for Jean-Pierre revolved around Biden’s mental and physical health. Biden and his allies have publicly acknowledged the debate didn’t go well but once again reminded everyone how much Biden is “fighting” for the American people.
“Is anyone in the White House hiding information about the president’s health or his ability to do the job day to day?” one reporter asked Jean-Pierre.
“Absolutely not,” she responded.
Jean-Pierre repeated that the administration has been “transparent” when it comes to Biden’s health history, adding that they have released detailed medical reports for his annual checkups.
