By: Daniel John Sobieski

Joe Biden may have announced his intention to run for reelection in 2024 but it is clear from his stiff-legged gait and increasing mumbling incoherence that the only thing he’ll be running for in 2024 may be the bathroom. His recent physical exam has done nothing to dispel the growing belief among the public and some political professionals that Joe Biden is dangerously near the point of complete physical and mental collapse.

Amazingly, his physical exam did not include either a cognitive test or an MRI brain scan despite an obvious need for both, a fact noted by medical expert and Fox News contributor Dr. Marc Siegel after a curiously rosy scenario offered by WH Physician Kevin O’Connor:

WH Physician Kevin O’Connor stated that Biden “remains a healthy, vigorous, 78-year-old male, who is fit to execute the duties of the Presidency successfully.”

But, O’Connor noted that Biden’s current medical problems include “a-fib with the normal ventricular response, hyperlipidemia, gastroesophageal reflux, seasonal allergies, spinal arthritis and mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of both feet.”

Dr. Marc Siegel, a Clinical Professor of Medicine and a practicing internist at NYU Langone Medical Center raised his voice to share what he thinks about Biden’s exam.

“I don’t like that they ascribe his gait issues to a broken foot. First of all, why did he fall,” Siegel questioned, going on to say that the report also “prescribes the gait problem to spondylosis.”

“That’s an incomplete characterization,” Siegel continued. “What I want to know is, where’s the MRIs and where’s the EMGs?’’

“They did a thorough neurological exam, but they also need to do a nerve conduction EMG, and they need to do an MRI of the brain and the spinal cord to try and explain where this gait problem comes from,” he stated.

“If we’re looking into neurological causes for the gait change, I don’t think the way they characterize that in the physical is sufficient,” Siegel said. “I want more information. I want to know what the MRIs show, and I want to know what the nerve conduction EMG shows to rule out more extensive things, that by the way, can be associated with cognitive changes like mental status, like dementia.”

Joe Biden lives in a world of favorite ice cream flavors and elder care in which the White House has been transformed into the world’s largest nursing home. The joke these days is that Joe Biden eats so much ice cream because he is immune to brain freeze. The man whose 1988 presidential campaign imploded because he was so bereft of original thought that he had to plagiarize a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock now is seemingly incapable of producing a single coherent and complete thought of his own. The cognitive powers required for interacting with a foreign leader in front of unscripted reporters and unscripted world leaders have long left him.

There are only so many sleights of hand his handlers can pull off.

Biden’s cognitive decline and borderline dementia have been painfully obvious. A shortlist of Biden brain cramps before and after the G7 Summit has been compiled by Joseph Curl over at the Daily Wire:

Case in point: Mr. Biden’s view of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Over the weekend, Biden called Putin a “killer” — not exactly diplomatic rhetoric when dealing with another world leader. So in a press conference Monday, Biden was asked about his opinion of the former KGB intelligence officer.

“In a weekend interview, Vladimir Putin laughed at the suggestion that you had called him a ‘killer.’ Is that still your belief, sir, that he is a killer?” CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny asked.

Here is Biden’s answer verbatim from the official White House transcript:

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughs.) To answer the first question — (laughs) — I’m laughing too. They actually — I —

Q: So he is a killer?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, I mean, he has made clear that — the answer is: I believe he has, in the past, essentially acknowledged that he was — there were certain things that he would do or did do. But look, when I was asked that question on air, I answered it honestly. But it’s not much of a — I don’t think it matters a whole lot, in terms of this next meeting we’re about to have.

Huh? By the end of that meandering non-answer, Biden had forgotten the second question.

“Let’s be honest, our American president is not very good on his feet,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich later said on Fox News in a grand understatement.

There was so much more. On Sunday, Biden confused two countries, one in Africa, the other in Asia — three times.

“We can work together with Russia, for example, in Libya. We should be opening up the passage to be able to go through, provide food assistance, and economic — I mean, vital assistance to a population that’s in real trouble,” Biden said.

White House aides later told reporters Biden meant Syria, not Libya.

Good thing Biden wasn’t asked if he thought the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia. He wouldn’t have known which one – ours or the one Russia invaded.

The third season opener of the iconic sci-fi series “Star Trek” was an episode titled “Spock’s Brain” in which an unidentified humanoid female from a seemingly advanced civilization transports aboard the starship Enterprise and, after rendering the entire crew unconscious, absconds with science officer Spock’s brain. Capt. Kirk and the crew spend the episode tracking down the brain and figuring out a way to make Spock whole and functional again.

It is unlikely aliens have descended and absconded with Joe Biden’s brain, but there is no clear answer to Joe Biden’s incoherent outbursts, inability to complete coherent sentences or thoughts, failure to remember where he is, who people are, even what office he is running for. We all get old and forgetful and to some extent the prone-to plagiarism Biden has always had his tongue engaged before his brain was in gear. The “that’s just Joe” refrain became a cliché. But there’s more going on here than just getting old and forgetful even though that would be bad enough. His “gaffes” seem to be a frightening predictor of things to come. We need to know his mental status before he gets his hand on the nuclear codes and determines policy, or becomes a sock puppet for an administration full of Obama-era puppet master all too willing to be his Rasputin.

A 2020 campaign suggestion was for Biden to end his commercials with the tag, “I’m Joe Biden and I forgot this message.” We drop our jaws or grit our teeth when he calls Arizona a great city, talks about Super Thursday, says African-Americans ain’t black if they don’t support him and that blacks all think alike, and c’mon man, you know the thing. Our country’s future depends on the state of his brain and it may be missing like Spock’s, except it isn’t funny anymore. We need to know what is wrong with Joe Biden’s brain.

If it had happened to Trump, it would have been the top story for months, but it was not that long ago that Joe Biden’ eyes filled with blood during a CNN town hall as the New York Post reported:

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s left eye filled with blood during an appearance on a CNN town hall Wednesday.

As he answered a question about climate change, the former vice president’s eye turned red, and the Washington Examiner suggested it might have been caused by a broken blood vessel, a condition known as a subconjuctival hemorrhage.

It can be caused by a number of things — including sneezing, coughing, straining, eye rubbing, trauma from injury, high blood pressure or a bleeding disorder​ — according to WebMD.

As a senator, Biden​ ​had emergency surgery twice for life-threatening brain aneurysms in 1988.

The eye bleed is likely not related to Biden’s cognitive difficulties but the possible lingering effects of those two brain surgeries may now be visible in Joe Biden’s daily cognitive breakdown. The signs are ignored by a lapdog media which would not be the case if this was happening to Trump.

Dr. Marc Siegel, M.D., is a noted professor of medicine and medical director at Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health and a Fox News Medical Correspondent. Dr. Siegel not long ago penned a piece for The Hill in which he detailed the possible lingering effects of such surgery which makes them a lifetime handicap:

…I was not concerned when I saw blood appear in his left eye during the CNN climate-change town hall last week….

What was more concerning to me, as a physician, was when Biden appeared to lose his train of thought mid-sentence.  

In recent weeks, the former vice president has at times made what appeared to be cognitive errors. These include reportedly forgetting which state — Vermont or New Hampshire — he was in, when the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations occurred, and that he was not vice president when the Parkland, Fla., school shooting occurred

Last weekend, at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Biden slipped and called the president “Donald Hump” before correcting himself and calling it a Freudian slip.

Biden had two brain aneurysms repaired surgically in 1988. The first one was fairly large, a centimeter in size, and was leaking. His neurosurgeon, Dr. Neal Kassell, has stated publicly that Biden is in excellent shape.

Still, the fact remains that studies have shown this type of aneurysm repair — especially when associated with a bleed — can sometimes lead to long-term cognitive difficulties, with problems in thinking, memory or orientation.   

As BizPac Review has reported, Siegel elaborated some more on Biden’s mental health recently on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show:

The discussion came after a monologue during which host Sean Hannity dissected what appears to be presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s declining cognitive state….

“VP Biden in 1988 had two aneurysms repaired surgically before the modern, most modern techniques came in. Studies have shown that there’s up to 50 percent cognitive impairment long-term following those aneurysm repairs,” he said.

“Also a matter of public record, former VP Biden has atrial fibrillation, which is an irregular heartbeat. He’s on blood thinners for that. A major study called the Swiss Atrial Fibrillation Study came out about a year ago. Over 1,200 people studied. They found three percent per year, even if people were on blood thinners, ended up having silent strokes. And guess how silent strokes present — they present usually with cognitive impairment with faltering, with inability to think clearly.”…

Atrial fibrillation also coincides with dementia, according to Hugh Calkins, MD, FHRS, FACC, FAHA, FESC, the Catherine Ellen Poindexter Professor of Cardiology and director of the electrophysiology laboratory and arrhythmia service at Johns Hopkins University

“There are many studies showing an increased rate of all types of dementia in patients with [AF],” he said last year to Neurology Advisor.

Continuing his remarks, Siegel noted that the study tested the cognitive state of participants using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test. That’s the same test that the president reportedly aced earlier this year and that he’s since argued Biden ought to take as well. The doctor agreed.

The Alzheimer’s Association defines dementia as, “An overall term that describes a group of symptoms associated with a decline in memory or other thinking skills severe enough to reduce a person’s ability to perform everyday activities.” For anybody that is a scary and difficult reality to deal with.. but Joe Biden wants his everyday activities to include running the most powerful economic and military power on earth. Now, let’s see. Just where did I put that nuclear football?

Not long ago, the media who are currently silent on Biden’s mental state was entertaining fantasies about the deterioration of Donald Trump’s mental state. They prattled on endlessly about Trump’s energetic personality coupled with his bluntness being a sign of mental disability as evidenced by a piece published in Psychology Today:

Millions of people around the country and the globe have expressed bafflement at the nature of the personality at the center of it all, and many are alarmed by tactics and policies that appear not only erratic but often retrogressive and undermining of long-established democratic practices. Chief among them is a well-documented distortion of facts if not outright lies about everything from crowd size at the inauguration to discussions with foreign heads of state….

Trump’s manifest grandiosity and disregard for facts, beginning with failure to accept clear evidence about the size of the crowd attending his inauguration, has put mental health professionals in the spotlight from Day One of his presidency.

Psychologists and commentators from all ideological camps early converged on a label of narcissistic personality disorder as the condition that “explains” Trump’s behavior. Among those making this assertion are more than 70,000 mental health professionals who signed a petition warning of Trump’s potential dangerousness, despite longstanding professional injunctions against “diagnosing” public figures whom experts have not personally examined.

Trump is fine, thank you, demonstrating a coherence and competence as well as a schedule that is staggering, compared to an opponent that reads scripted material from his basement as his handlers prompt him through an earpiece and with off-camera assistance. Before the Chinese Wuhan virus and urban unrest in Democrat-run jurisdictions struck, Trump had the economy roaring with record job and wage growth. Not bad for a crazy man.

Still, no less an authority than Dr. Joe Scarborough over at MSNBC said on cable network television he thought Trump had onset dementia:

Joe Scarborough called on the Cabinet to remove Trump from office, adding that people close to the president have said he has shown signs of dementia.

Joe Scarborough called on the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Donald Trump from office, adding that people close to the president have said he has shown early signs of dementia.

“If this is not what the 25th Amendment was drafted for — I would like the Cabinet members serving America, not the president, serving America— you serve America and you know it,” Scarborough said. “You know you don’t serve Donald J. Trump, scam developer, scam you know Trump University proprietor, reality TV show host, you don’t represent him. You represent 320 million people whose lives are literally in your hands, and we are facing a showdown with a nuclear power and have you somebody inside the White House, somebody that the New York Daily News says is mentally unfit.”

Scarborough and his ilk ignored the fact thatTrump’s accomplishments in business and in the White House are real and unparalleled, just as they ignore Biden’s visible deterioration in a campaign and administration that borders on elder abuse. Biden is showing real signs of dementia not imaginary ones conjured up out of hatred for and policy differences with Trump. We are witnessing the most epic breakdown since Captain Queeg lost it in the classic film “The Caine Mutiny.” He is starting to make VP Kamala Harris look good – perhaps even a scarier thought. She is only a heartbeat away – or maybe just a few brain cells.

*Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.