In the months leading up to President Joe Biden’s commanding debate performance, Vice President Kamala Harris made repeated efforts to affirm and defend his intellectual acuity, according to a new analysis from Fox News Digital.
The questions posed to Harris about Biden’s mental capacity have been raised frequently since fall 2023, as the president has repeatedly made public comments that raised concerns about his health ahead of an election year. The president is 81 years old.
When asked about Biden’s age during a November interview on SiriusXM, Harris suggested that “the age on your birth certificate” is “not a measure of who a person is.”
“Let’s not get distracted. Let’s see if we have a president who actually delivers, keeps his promises and addresses issues that have needed to be addressed for years,” Harris said. “Joe Biden has done that. That’s the measure of his character, not the age on his birth certificate.”
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President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris appear on the Truman Balcony at the White House, Thursday, July 4, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Tierney L. Cross)
While 2023 has seen some gaffes for Biden, including a fall at the Air Force Academy graduation in June, calling the Grand Canyon one of the “nine” wonders of the world in August and claiming in September that he was at Ground Zero the day after 9/11, even though records show he was in Washington, D.C., on that day, Harris was again asked if the president’s age was a concern.
“I would say age is not just a chronological fact,” Harris said in an interview at the DealBook Summit hosted by The New York Times in November 2023, adding that she has “absolute authority” during the conference.
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The vice president, who has emerged as Biden’s leading successor if he is replaced as the presidential candidate, said in January that “we have to get over the issue of the president’s age.”
“So this issue that they’re bringing up about his age, because, again, they don’t have an electoral appeal,” Harris told Katie Couric one-on-one on iHeartRadio’s “Next Question with Katie Couric” podcast. “And I just think we’ve got to get past this, because ultimately I think what the American people deserve is for their leaders to offer solutions and to improve their standard of living.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Las Vegas on June 28, 2024. (Bizayev Tesfaye)
Harris, 59, was later asked by ABC News about concerns about Biden’s fitness for the job.
“I’ve spent a lot of time with Biden in a variety of locations, including the Oval Office and the Emergency Room, and he is, in fact, extraordinarily smart and has the ability to see ahead to the challenges that we’re going to face as a nation and as a world,” Harris told the outlet in January.
Ms Harris defended Mr Biden when Special Counsel Robert Hur described him as a “caring, well-meaning, elderly man with a fragile memory” in his report on the handling of classified documents, arguing that was false.
“Accordingly, the president’s behavior as described in the report is completely at odds with the facts and is clearly politically motivated and without merit,” Harris said of the report at a gathering of Community Violence Intervention Leaders in February.
President Joe Biden looks on as he participates in and debates the first presidential debate of the 2024 election with former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at CNN studios in Atlanta, Georgia, June 27, 2024. (Andrew Caballero Reynolds/AFP)
Then, just minutes after the June 27 debate ended, Harris appeared on CNN to defend the president’s performance, which had already caused uproar within the Democratic Party.
Asked about concerns about Biden’s performance in a post-debate interview, the vice president sought to undermine former President Trump, saying the president “got off to a slow start” but that the debate should not be compared to Biden’s “performance” over his three-and-a-half years as president.
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“Last night, President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump had their first debate, and the president said today that it was not his best performance,” Harris told voters in Las Vegas after the debate. “This election will not be decided overnight in June.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Harris for comment but had not heard back at the time of writing.
