Jago Times "English Edition" Best Online Newspaper
WASHINGTON — Texas congressman Ronny Jackson, who gushed about Donald Trump’s health during a controversial tenure as White House physician, has demanded that President Joe Biden undergo a cognitive test to rule out dementia.
But the 78-year-old president got a clean bill of mental health from Russian strongman Vladimir Putin – a former KGB officer who usually relishes the chance to undermine an American counterpart.
“He does not miss a thing, trust me,” Putin, 68, said Thursday, the day after their summit in Geneva, vouching for Biden as he met with graduates at the Higher School of Public Administration in Moscow. “Biden is a professional, you have to be very attentive when working with him so as not to miss something.”
That assessment of the oldest American president in history, as reported by the Russian news agency Tass and The Moscow Times, is at odds with the diagnosis from Jackson, a former Navy admiral who led the White House medical office under Trump and Barack Obama.
“We can’t sit on this any longer,” Jackson said Thursday night on Fox News’ “Hannity,” where he called Biden’s performance this week “embarrassing” at the G7 and NATO summits in England and Brussels, and the Putin summit in Switzerland. “He’s not physically or cognitively fit to be our president right now.”
Trump tried unsuccessfully to install Jackson in his cabinet as secretary of Veterans Affairs.
The nomination quickly fell apart amid accusations of mismanagement, abusive behavior toward subordinates, drinking, and liberal dispensing of painkillers.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dmn/MP4Q2QIY5NQUHWMZLIUGO7PQ4U.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dmn/HRMWXBSX5P3W7NGDLV5O6CES7U.jpg)
Last fall, with Trump’s endorsement, Jackson won an open West Texas congressional seat, replacing longtime GOP Rep. Mac Thornberry, a policy wonk who had chaired the Armed Services Committee. Jackson has proven to be more of a partisan agitator, as evidenced by his letter to Biden co-signed by 13 GOP colleagues.
“The American people should have absolute confidence in their President,” they wrote. “They deserve to know that he or she can perform the duties of Head of State and Commander in Chief. They deserve full transparency on the mental capabilities of their highest elected leader. To achieve this, we urge you to submit to a cognitive test immediately. We implore you to then publish the test results, so the American people know the full mental and intellectual health of their President.”
Trump critics leveled questions about his mental fitness throughout his tenure. In January 2018, after a scathing expose by author Michael Wolff in the book “Fire and Fury,” Trump insisted that he was in fact a “very stable genius.”
With Jackson scheduled to give Trump a medical exam, mental health professionals insisted he include a cognitive work-up, citing Trump’s “rambling” speech, “suspect judgment, planning, problem solving and impulse control” and other publicly observable symptoms of decline.
On Jan. 16, 2018, Jackson announced that Trump had requested and aced a Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a test commonly used to screen for dementia, the same test Jackson now insists Biden submit to because all presidents should “follow the precedent set by former President Trump to document and demonstrate sound mental abilities.”
“I can reliably say… that if he had some kind of mental, cognitive issue, that this test is sensitive enough, it would have picked up on it. He would not have got 30 out of 30,” Jackson told the White House press corps at the time. “And my personal experience is that he has absolutely no cognitive or mental issues whatsoever.”
That was the same briefing at which he declared that at 6-foot-3 and 239 pound, one pound shy of obesity, Trump was in “excellent” health.
Three other Texas Republicans co-signed Jackson’s letter: Rep. Brian Babin of Woodville, a dentist, and Reps. Beth Van Duyne of Irving and Pat Fallon of Frisco, who like most of the co-signers have no medical background.
The letter cites purported memory lapses and stumbles that aren’t especially unusual for Biden, who has been known for verbal gaffes since long before he hit retirement age.
“In March you forgot the name of the Pentagon, the Defense Department, and the Defense Secretary,” Jackson wrote, referring to a passing comment at the end of a 15-minute speech, when Biden used the occasion of International Women’s Day to tout promotions for two female four-star generals: “I want to thank Sec- — the former general — I keep calling him `General.’ My — the guy who runs that outfit over there.”
The letter is CC’d to the current White House physician, Kevin O’Connor, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser.
Putin, however, vouched without reservation for Biden’s mental acuity after their two-hour encounter in Geneva.
“The image of President Biden, which is portrayed by our and even the American press, has nothing to do with reality,” he said in Moscow, dispelling the suggestion that Biden “gets confused sometimes.”
He noted that White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who is 42, sometimes stumbles over words or misspeaks, too, and she’s “a young, educated, beautiful woman….It’s not because her education does not allow her or her memory is bad.”