White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was visibly unsettled during a recent interview with a North Carolina radio show host who questioned President Joe Biden’s mental acuity.
The roughly six-minute exchange, aired on WBT Charlotte’s News Talk on Tuesday, saw Jean-Pierre facing inquiries from the station’s news director, Mark Garrison, regarding the Democratic president’s cognitive abilities.
At 81, Biden is the oldest sitting president in U.S. history, prompting concerns from both Republicans and some members of his own party about his fitness to serve another four years.
Garrison began the conversation by referencing concerns raised by some individuals about Biden possibly having dementia, to which Jean-Pierre responded sharply: “Mark, I can’t even believe you’re asking me this question. That is an incredibly offensive question to ask.”
“Let me be very clear about this,” Jean-Pierre said. “For the past several years, the president’s physician has laid out in a comprehensive way the president’s health. This is a president if you watch him every day, if you really pay attention to his record of what he has done, you will see exactly how focused he has been on the American people, how historic his actions have been.
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“And so I’m not even going to truly, truly, really, you know, take the premise of your question,” she continued. “I think it is incredibly insulting. And and so we can, you know, we can move on to the next question.”
The White House official dismissed the premise of the question as insulting and swiftly redirected the conversation. Despite Garrison’s attempt to steer the discussion toward economic matters, Jean-Pierre promptly ended the interview, thanking the host and terminating the call.
In response to questions about the interview’s conclusion, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates clarified that Jean-Pierre had “multiple back-to-back interviews with radio stations who were each offered seven minutes,” and that Pierre simply “called into the next interview so everyone could get their full time.”
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Recent polling in North Carolina indicates widespread concerns about the president’s mental fitness, with nearly 60 percent of adults, including a significant portion of Democratic voters, expressing apprehensions about his capacity.
Similar questions have surrounded former President Donald Trump’s mental acuity, with notable figures in the field of psychiatry citing signs of dementia in both leaders.
Despite ongoing speculation, Biden addressed concerns about his age during his recent State of the Union address, saying that the “issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old our ideas are.”
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