President Joe Biden declined to commit to undertaking an independent cognitive test amid concerns about his age and mental acuity after his debate against former President Donald Trump.
“Look, I have a cognitive test every single day,” Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during his first post-debate interview. “Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning but I’m running the world. Sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.”
“Watch me between — there’s a lot of time left in this campaign,” he said before denying he is frail.
Biden did concede he can no longer “run the 100 in 10 flat” but contended he is in “good shape” and dared Stephanopoulos to “come keep my schedule.”
When pressed whether he was the same man who became president four years ago, Biden argued, “In terms of successes, yes.”
“I just think it cost me a really bad night — a bad run,” he said when asked about the toll his first four years in office have had on his body.
In an exchange about the debate, Biden distinguished the debate as a “bad episode” and not symptomatic of a “condition,” a question posed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
“It was a bad episode,” he said. “No indication of any serious condition. I was exhausted. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing and — and a bad night.”
When pushed on the downtime he had at Camp David after his trips to Europe, Biden repeated that he had been sick and was “feeling terrible.”
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“Matter of fact, the docs with me, I asked them,” he said. “They did a COVID test because we were trying to figure out what was wrong. They did a test to see whether or not I had some infection, you know, a virus. I didn’t. I just had a really bad cold.”
Biden added he did not “think” he watched the debate afterward, though he did not blame aides for his poor performance.
