President Joe Biden did not answer if he would finish his first full four-year term or give power to his vice president, instead poking fun at a reporter for questioning him on the topic.
“President Biden, will you be serving your full four-year term or handing over power to Vice President Harris?” New York Post White House correspondent Steven Nelson asked.
“Are you okay? Are you alright? You’re not hurt, are you? I said are you okay? Did you fall on your head or something?” Biden answered while standing in a photo line ahead of his campaign event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Nelson at one point asked the president to come closer because he could not hear his response.
Q: “President Biden, will you be serving your full four-year term or handing over power to Vice President Harris?”
President Biden: “Are you okay? Are you alright? You’re not hurt are you? I said are you okay? Did you fall on your head or something?” pic.twitter.com/6uOquSaCZm
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 29, 2024
About five months out from the 2024 election, top Democrats are reportedly in a full freak out over Biden’s reelection campaign. Former President Donald Trump has led Biden in both national polls and across several key swing states. And while the president and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have had an advantage in cash on hand, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Trump campaign topped their opponents in the month of April by nearly $25 million.
“You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,” a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House told Politico. The outlet granted the source anonymity in order to speak freely.
“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end,’” the source continued.
Ahead of Democrats reported panic, concerns about Biden’s fitness for office began to rise following a special counsel report. After investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents, special counsel Robert Hur opted not to charge the 81-year-old and justified his decision by saying the jury might see Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” (RELATED: Biden Invokes Executive Privilege To Block Release Of Hur Tapes)
Following the release of the report, Biden held a press conference to mute concerns about his declining fitness. The 81-year-old blamed Hur for bringing up questions about his son’s death, but the release of the transcript showed that Biden brought up the date.
Though the transcripts of Biden’s interview are public, the president used executive privilege to block the release of the audio recording of the event.
“The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal — to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” Edward N. Siskel, counsel to the president, wrote in a letter obtained by The Washington Post. “Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials from the Executive Branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate.”
