Former Vice President Joe Biden's brain surgeon has insisted the presidential hopeful is in good health and hasn’t suffered brain dam...
Former Vice President Joe Biden's brain surgeon has insisted the presidential hopeful is in good health and hasn’t suffered brain damage as a result of numerous medical complications.
In an interview with Politico published Tuesday morning, Dr. Neal Kassell insisted 76-year-old Biden ‘is every bit as sharp as he was 31-years-ago,’ and said he’s hasn’t seen ‘any change’ in his patient over the last few decades, having previously treated the Democrat for two brain aneurysms in 1988.
‘I can tell you with absolute certainty that he had no brain damage, either from the hemorrhage or from the operations that he had,’ Kassell said. ‘There was no damage whatsoever.’
Concern of Biden’s mental acuity has been brought into question ever since he launched his White House bid in April, in light of a number of blunders and slip-ups during televised interviews and campaign speeches.
And he’s likely to come under fierce scrutiny once more after the self-proclaimed ‘gaffe machine’ managed to place two of the most historically poignant moments of the 1960s in the wrong decade during a speech in Urbandale, Iowa, on Tuesday afternoon.
Just like in my generation, when I got out of school, when Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King had been assassinated in the '70s, the late '70s when I got engaged,’ Biden said of the two murders, which took place just weeks apart in 1968.
He then seemed to revert back to the correct decade in a later sentence, referencing a number of cultural trends that roiled the US during the sixties, saying ‘um, you know, up to that time remember – none of you women will know this but a couple men may remember – that was a time in the early, late ’60s, early ’60s and ’60s…’
Biden did seem at least to get the date of his engagement to his second wife, Jill Biden, correct having tied the knot in 1977.
The bizarre stumble comes as one of many in recent weeks, raising concern among members of his campaign staff who’re said to be considering limiting his public appearances in the future to preserve his place atop the polls.
Such misstatements have included declaring that poor children are ‘just as bright’ as white children, and he even claimed to be Vice President during the Parkland school shootings in 2018, despite having left office more than a year earlier.
The 2020 front-runner has even said he supports ‘truth over facts’ and incorrectly stated that two mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton earlier this month occurred in Michigan and Houston.
President Trump, who himself is no stranger to slips of the tongue, highlighted Biden’s slew of errors on Twitter, asking his followers if anybody believed the ex-Vice President was ‘mentally fit’ enough to take office.
A senior Biden advisor told Fox News that any concerns over Biden’s mental state were part of a ‘press narrative’ and held no truth.
A former advisor to President Obama, David Axelrod, has also blasted the advice to limit Biden’s appearances as a result of his public bumbling.
‘This is bad advice. You can’t cloister the candidate and win,’ Axelrod tweeted, who served alongside Biden during the Obama years.
‘He either can cut it or he can’t, and the only way he can prove he can is to be an active and vigorous candidate. He’s running for president of the United States, for God’s sake.’
The two aneurysms Biden suffered in 1988 were fully treated and his brain has shown no sides of side-effects as a result of the treatments, Dr. Kassell said, adding that any concern over his age or mental fitness is overblown.
Biden isn’t the only candidate facing questions about his age, with five of the presidential candidates – including Donald Trump, 73 – aged 70 or older.
The oldest among the bunch is 78-year-old Bernie Sanders, who has already surpassed the life expectancy of the average American by two years.
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