Biden After Latest Memory Lapse: ‘I’m Not Going Nuts’

Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire, on Aug. 24, 2019. Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

Former Vice President Joe Biden told supporters that he wasn’t going crazy, after his latest memory lapse.

While campaigning in New Hampshire on Aug. 23, Biden, 76, forgot what building he spoke in earlier the same day at Dartmouth College.

“I’m not sure whether it was the medical school or where the hell I spoke. But it was on the campus," Biden told the crowd.

“I want to be clear, I’m not going nuts,” Biden added.

In the same state, Biden told reporters: “What’s not to like about Vermont?”

Biden was asked about his experience in Keene, a town in New Hampshire.

“I love this place. Look, what’s not to like about Vermont in terms of the beauty of it? And what a neat town. This is like a scenic, beautiful town. The mayor’s been a good guy. Everybody has been really friendly. I like Keene a lot,” Biden said.

The former vice president and senator was asked on Aug. 24 about voters who are concerned about his age.

“I say if they’re concerned, don’t vote for me,” Biden said, reported the Los Angeles Times.

Not all voters are concerned. Roger Meyers, 68, who worked for General Electric until he retired, told the Los Angeles Times he was no longer worried about Biden’s age after seeing him speak.

“I can live without policy,” Meyers said, “if we can have stability and sanity and reasonableness and not white supremacy.”

And Dr. Neal Kassell, who performed surgery for two brain aneurysms on Biden in 1988, told Politico that Biden “is every bit as sharp as he was 31 years ago. I haven’t seen any change.”

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Des Moines Register Soapbox during a visit to the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 8, 2019. AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

“I can tell you with absolute certainty that he had no brain damage, either from the hemorrhage or from the operations that he had. There was no damage whatsoever,” Kassell said.

Still, the series of memory lapses and factual misstatements have been adding up.

Biden recently said that he was vice president in 2018, later claiming that people still called him by his former title. Speaking at a campaign event in Iowa on Aug. 20, he said that Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated in the 1970s.

He has also mixed up a number of towns and states, including saying the mass shootings in early August took place in Houston, Texas, and Michigan. The shootings happened in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Biden also told a crowd on Aug. 8 that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

President Donald Trump, 73, told reporters that when he saw what Biden said, he said to himself, “Whoa.”

Biden’s press representatives have defended their candidate.

“Donald Trump is desperate to change the subject from his atrocious record of using racism to divide this country,” Biden spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said in response to Trump.

“Vice President Biden misspoke and immediately corrected himself during a refrain he often uses to make the point that all children deserve a fair shot, and children born into lower-income circumstances are just as smart as those born to wealthy parents,” she said.