Amid growing concern within Democrats about Biden’s status as the party’s presumptive nominee, former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a new interview that he has “no doubt” Biden is mentally capable of carrying out the duties of the presidency.
“I have no doubts in my interactions with him,” Fauci said when asked about Biden. CBS News Podcast “The Takeout” I asked Major Garrett if he had any concerns about the president’s “vigor and mental capacity” to continue to serve.
“And I can only speak within my own interactions with him,” Fauci added in the interview published Wednesday.
Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for nearly four decades, warned against drawing medical conclusions based on a single event.
He was asked if he had seen “anything medically alarming.”[ing]”I can’t say that. I think that’s inappropriate to say, Major, because when you’re just looking at somebody on a one-off basis, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Fauci responded during Biden’s debate performance last week.
“Did he have a bad cold? Did he take an antihistamine to keep him drowsy? Or did he take some other medication? We don’t know what happened,” Fauci continued, “and I think it’s unfair and inappropriate to try to diagnose anything based on just 90 minutes of footage.”
Fauci, who retired at the end of Biden’s second year in office, described Biden as astute and inquisitive in his interactions with the president. When asked if Biden’s debate performance bore “any resemblance” to what he’d seen in his interactions with the president, Fauci replied, “No, clearly not.”
“I don’t want to comment on what happened that night, but to me it just seemed like a bad night,” Fauci said, “because my interactions with him are exactly what I wrote in my book and they happened after what I wrote in my book after I got out of the hospital.”
“His questions are very thorough, he’s very analytical, he’s very calm about things,” he said of Biden, adding that he always asked “very good questions” during the press conference.
Fauci continued, “So I have to say that my interaction with him has been very positive in every sense of the word.”
The interview came as questions are being raised about whether Biden should remain at the top of the shortlist after last week’s tough debate, with two Democrats already calling on him to step aside and others expressing concern about former President Trump’s ability to beat him in November.
Biden and his team have repeatedly stressed that the president has four more years in office and have dismissed last week’s debate as a poor performance by the commander in chief.
“The president knows how to get the job done, not because he says so, but because his track record proves it. And over the last three and a half years, almost four years, the president’s track record has been unprecedented, serving the American people,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.
