The Geriatric Cognitive Decline of President Biden

On the 2nd of April 2024, the UK’s Daily Mail Newspaper were one of many around the world reporting on yet another embarassing senior’s moment from the ailing 81 year old US President Joe Biden. They reported that “President Joe Biden was mocked online Monday after he tripped over his words and referred to ‘oyster bunnies’ instead of the ‘Easter bunnies.’ The president made his verbal gaffe during his opening remarks at the annual Easter Egg roll hosted on the White House South Lawn. ‘By the way, say hello to oyster bunnies! Come on up here bunnies, so they can see you, c’mon get in there,’ he said to the two large costumed Easter bunnies dressed for the occasion.”

Political pundits like myself could easily dismiss this as an innocent slip of the tongue. However, when combined with the regular, ongoing slip ups, verbal gaffes, physical stumbles and falls, as well as losing his train of thought mid sentence, the concern for the cognitive health of the most powerful man on the planet becomes scarily real and deeply concerning.

Much has been commented on in the US press particularly in relation to President Biden’s cognitive health. Predictably, his team go to great lengths to prove there is “nothing to see her folks, move along”. With the Presidential election fast approaching in November this year, surely this must be a major consideration for even the most rusted on Democrat supporters across America.

If you need further proof, Time Magazine kindly provided details of some of President Biden’s most horrific and embarrasing gaffes. How much of this is due to a genuine lack of intellect or an inability to string a coherent sentence together is for you to determine. The icing on the cake has been his obvious Geriatric Cognitive Decline over more recent years. Here’s a little taste going back a while, for your reading pleasure:

June 17, 2006: “In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” – Joe Biden, captured on C-SPAN’s “Road to the White House” series, trying to bond with an Indian-American supporter.

Jan. 31, 2007: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”  – Joe Biden, describing fellow candidate Barack Obama. The remark was made the same day Biden filed the official paperwork to launch his presidential campaign. Biden later apologized and said the remark was taken out of context.

Sept. 9, 2008: “I’m told Chuck Graham, state senator, is here. Stand up Chuck, let ’em see you. Oh, God love you. What am I talking about. I’ll tell you what, you’re making everybody else stand up, though, pal.” – Joe Biden, telling Missouri state senator Chuck Graham to stand up at a campaign rally, before realizing that Graham is confined to a wheelchair.

Feb. 6, 2009: “If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there’s still a 30% chance we’re going to get it wrong.” – Vice President Joe Biden, speaking to members of the House Democratic caucus.

April 30, 2009: “I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places right now. It’s not that it’s going to Mexico, it’s that you are in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the aircraft. That’s me.” – Vice President Joe Biden, when asked on NBC’s Today Show what he would tell his relatives if they wanted to fly to Mexico the next week.

But that was a long time ago, you may be thinking. Well, here are some absolute clangers from President Biden a lot more recently to suggest that Geriatric Cognitive Decline has set in, in a major way:

In September 2022, President Joe Biden mistakenly asked whether the late Rep. Jackie Walorski, who died in a car accident last month, was at a White House event that she helped convene. As reported by NBC News, at one point Biden asked, “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” as he looked out and scanned the audience. He did not correct his remarks. Walorski, a five-term lawmaker, died in a car crash along with two of her staffers on August the 3rd 2022. She was 58 years of age. A reporter highlighted Biden’s embarrassing moment to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre shortly thereafter: “The confusing part is why, if she and the family is top of mind, does the president think that she’s living and in the room?”

As someone who also works in the mental health and counselling space, I work with older aged clients to assist with their psychological issues and challenges. In that context, I thought it would be helpful to take a quick look at what constitutes Geriatric Cognitive Decline so you can make your own minds up about what sits behind President Biden’s grinding and dusty conveyor belt of embarrassing moments worthy of a B-Grade Comedy Show.

According to the WebMD website which I use regularly as a helpful reference tool, “cognitive decline in older adults refers to the concern of or difficulty with a person’s thinking, memory, concentration, and other brain functions beyond what is typically expected due to aging. Cognitive decline, also known as cognitive impairment, can come on suddenly or gradually, and it can be permanent or temporary. It can be scary for the person experiencing the symptoms as well as their family and friends.”

Some of the most common signs that President Biden may in fact be experiencing Geriatric Cognitive Decline, include the following: 

• ‌Forgetting things more frequently.
• Forgetting important appointments or social engagements or where one is at any given moment in time.
• Losing your train of thought or a thread of conversations in real time.
• Feeling increasingly overwhelmed and frustrated by making decisions or understanding instructions.
• Experiencing difficulty finding your way around familiar environments and demonstrating a lack of confidence as to where one should be going.
• Becoming more impulsive or showing increasingly poor judgment when communicating to others, particularly large audiences.

To really ram the point home, look no further than February 2024 after the release of a special counsel’s report investigating President Biden’s possession of classified documents. AP News reported at the time that the report described the 81-year-old Democrat’s memory as “hazy,” “fuzzy,” “faulty,” “poor” and having “significant limitations.” It noted that Biden could not recall defining milestones in his own life such as when his son Beau died or when he served as Vice President. “My memory is fine,” Biden responded after these damaging claims were made public, where he apparently grew visibly angry as he denied forgetting when his son died.

In that same month, Fox News reported that Biden told a Las Vegas crowd he met with François Mitterrand, a French president who has been deceased for 28 years. Biden made the blunder while retelling the story of a gathering with French President Emmanuel Macron at a G7 meeting shortly before he entered the Oval Office. “I sat down, and I said, ‘America’s back,” Biden told the crowd. “And Mitterrand from Germany — I mean from France.” Fox News pull no punches, saying that Biden’s gaffe from this past weekend follows several instances that involved deceased people, from referencing conversations with people who died before he was born to asking where they were during events.

The UK’s Guardian Newspaper reported in March 2024 that “A majority of voters in the US believe Joe Biden is just too old to be an effective president, according to a new poll by the New York Times and Siena College. According to the poll’s results, 73% of all registered voters believe Biden is too old to be effective, in turn revealing spreading concerns about the 81-year-old president’s mental competency.” What appears to be bleedingly obvious is that unless President Biden unlocks the magical secret to reverse aging, discovers the tonic required to provide badly needed mental clarity, or turns the fictional Delorean time machine into a tangible reality, his days as US President are numbered.

I, for one, will be very happy to see the shuffling feet, confused anger, and bizarre gaffes that have characterised the Biden Presidency come to an end in November this year. It’s time for this sad chapter in American political history to close. Let’s hope that the Amerrican voting public do the right thing and welcome President Trump back to the White House. One can only hope.