The White House on June 13 said a question about President Joe Biden’s health shouldn’t have been asked.
Don Lemon, a CNN host, was interviewing White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
“Does the president have the stamina physically and mentally do you think to continue on even after 2024?” Lemon wondered.
“Don, you’re asking me this question. Oh my gosh, he’s the president of the United States. I can’t even keep up with him. We just got back from New Mexico, we just got back from California. That is not a question that we should even be asking,” Jean-Pierre, who recently succeeded Jen Psaki, responded.
“Just look at the work that he does. Look how he’s delivering for the American public,” she added.
Jean-Pierre then suggested the question was based on a recent article from the New York Times, which said some Democrats, including members of Congress, have expressed doubts about Biden running for a second term.
“The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” David Axelrod, who helped run Barack Obama’s two winning campaigns, told the paper.
“I need an equivalent of Ron DeSantis, a Democrat, but not a 70- or 80-year-old—a younger person,” Alex Wyshyvanuk, another Democrat, said. “Someone who knows what worked for you in 1980 is not going to work for you in 2022 or 2024.”
DeSantis, 43, is the Republican governor of Florida and is a rumored 2024 candidate.
“That article that we’re talking about is hearsay, it’s fallacious. That’s not what we care about,” Jean-Pierre said on Monday.
“We care about how we going [sic] to deliver for the American people? How we going [sic] to make people’s lives better? ... That is his focus and that’s what we’re going to continue to focus on,” she said.
Biden, 79, was already the oldest president in history when he was inaugurated in January 2021.
Biden has acknowledged that his being elderly is a factor for people, saying before he was sworn in that “it’s a legitimate question to ask about my age.”
But he and the White House have insisted that he will run again in 2024.
“There’s something called the Hatch Act that I have to be very mindful of. What I can say is the president has repeatedly said that he plans to run in 2024, and I’m gonna have to leave it there,” Jean-Pierre said. “All I can say is that the president intends to do what the president plans to do.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) over the weekend became another Democrat to refuse to commit to backing Biden in the next election.
“We'll cross that bridge when we get to it,” she said on CNN.
