A Fox News Digital investigation has found that Vice President Harris said President Biden has served out his term and is fully eligible to serve another term, despite more than 80 publicly recorded meetings with him over the past year and despite his performance in debates and interviews.
Harris, who is now considered the leading Democratic presidential nominee since Biden withdrew, has attended at least 25 meetings with the president, eight lunches, 46 events and traveled with him twice between July 18, 2023 and July 17, 2024. Harris is one of the people best placed to talk about the president’s mental acuity.
Those dozens of meetings are just the ones listed on the public schedule. Not everything the president or vice president do is listed on the schedule, such as the time Biden and Harris spent in the Situation Room participating in briefings together, as they likely did after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.
After Biden stumbled and faltered during a debate with former President Trump in Atlanta in June, Harris spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and tried to defend the commander in chief.
“We certainly started slow, but we finished strong. And what was very clear throughout the night is that Joe Biden is fighting for the American people on substance, on policies and on record. Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong,” Harris said last month. “I’m not going to spend the whole night talking to you about the last 90 minutes because I’ve looked at the record over the last three and a half years.”
Kamala Harris has brushed off concerns about Biden’s mental competency for months.
President Biden and Vice President Harris (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images/File)
Harris earlier this year denounced a report by special counsel Robert Hur that described Biden as a “well-intentioned but elderly man with a poor memory” as “unfounded, inaccurate and inappropriate” criticism. But Biden’s public revelations about his mental health during the June 27 debate have left vulnerable Democratic lawmakers and donor bases confused about his viability as an older presidential candidate.
Biden, who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and was in self-isolation, announced in a letter posted on X on July 21 that he would abandon his bid for a second term and endorse Harris as his presidential candidate.
But in the months leading up to the debate, Harris had defended Biden’s mental competency after a series of gaffes and public falls.
In November, Harris was questioned by The New York Times at the DealBook Summit about comments made by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during debt negotiations that Biden was confused and needed guidance.
“I don’t think age is just a chronological fact. I spend a lot of time with the president in the Oval Office, the Situation Room and other places. As I said, the president holds absolute authority not only in rooms around the world but in the Oval Office, when he meets with members of Congress, leaders of business, leaders of the community,” Harris responded.
Vice President Harris and President Biden attended the Juneteenth Concert on the South Lawn of the White House on June 10, 2024. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
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“There’s only one person sitting behind the Resolute Desk,” she added. “I’m not lying… I’m telling you… but I’m telling you the facts.”
Hoare’s Justice Department report, released in February, found that Biden “knowingly” retained and disclosed classified information to ghostwriters but did not recommend criminal charges. Hoare said Biden had “limited capacity” during interviews with the special counsel’s office, described his memory as “severely limited,” and noted the president could not remember “even within a few years” when his son Beau died.
“The behavior of the president as portrayed in this report is factually inaccurate, clearly politically motivated and unjustified,” Harris said at an event on the White House grounds to discuss gun violence. “When it comes to the role and responsibility of prosecutors in these situations, we should expect a higher level of integrity than we’ve seen.”
President Biden spoke about the assassination attempt on former President Trump at the White House on July 14, 2024. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Harris then spoke of the “countless hours” she spent with Biden, the secretaries of defense and state and intelligence leaders following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists.
“The president was on top of everything, he was in control of everything,” Harris told reporters in February, “asking questions, asking our military, our intelligence and our diplomatic communities to understand how many people were killed, how many were American, how many hostages were there, was the situation stable?”
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“He has been at the helm for days and for months now, guiding and coordinating America’s national security leaders, not to mention our allies around the world,” she said.
Fox News’ Cary Kasick and Kevin Ferris contributed to this report.
