By Steve BermanA doctor from Walter Reed visiting the White House isn’t usually cause for investigation, but Col. Kevin R. Cannard (USA, Retired) is not any doctor. Dr. Cannard is an expert in treating “early phase Parkinson’s Disease.” And he didn’t just visit one time.
The question this week, as a normally friendly media and wagon-circling Democrats have turned on the elderly president, is why?
Emily Yoffe reported in The Free Press:
Whenever Biden has been pressed about his fitness for the White House, he’s often responded with a favorite catchphrase, “Watch me.” But the public has been watching—with increasing alarm. Neurologists, who generally wish to remain anonymous, have been watching, too.
One, an emeritus professor of neurology who has not treated the president, told The Free Press he believes Biden “has Parkinsonism, an umbrella term that refers to neurologic conditions that cause slowed movements, rigidity, and tremors. By observation, he has a masked face, reduced blinking, stiff and slow gait, hunched posture, low-volume voice, imbalance, freezing, mild cognitive disturbance, and difficulty turning.”
Another neurologist, who wrote to Berenson after his story was published, echoed these findings: “All the disturbing symptoms we all see are called Parkinsonism. . . . In fact in medical school we watch videos of patients with Parkinsonism like Biden to illustrate to the students how this manifests.”
The White House cannot hand-wave this away. They can’t count on the benefit of the doubt here because they do not deserve it. The compliant media may try to bury the story in order to give Democrats cover to cut a deal to get Biden to step aside, but we don’t owe them the chance to do that either. No, they all must come clean with what they know.
The blame game is well afoot. The media is in full gaslight mode about President Joe Biden, who was “sharp as a tack” for years and could do no wrong, they trumpeted over and over. Now they all say he somehow, in just one night, lost his ability for mentation. This is the same media that acted in collusion with elements of the U.S. government to squash stories that politically hurt Biden in 2020. It’s the same media that has pushed every possible negative story about Trump—true or not—for eight years.
We are being told not to believe our eyes and ears when it comes to Joe Biden, but to believe everything they tell us about Trump.
Most individuals, when faced with that assault on their own intelligence, would assume that the folks who are feeding it to them believe them to be stupid. Some voters may genuinely be ignorant; but many are just angry and therefore act out against the machine, because they’d rather break it themselves, and at least have democracy, than have it broken for them by others who say with lying certainty that they know better.
President Joe Biden wants to continue running for president, just like Nikki Haley wanted to continue her campaign to stop Trump—until she didn’t, and now she’ll vote for Trump since she’s a good Republican. In the vape-filled chambers and group chats that populate the Democratic Party, scrambling staffers and their bosses are trying to figure out ways to have bullet-proof excuses if Trump wins in November. Biden has the power to ignore everyone calling for him to drop out, but then he alone would get the blame if he loses. (Which I think he should: a man must reap his own consequences.)
If there’s anything we know about Joe Biden, it’s that he never wants to take the blame. Therefore, if he can find a way to step out and everyone else gets the blame, he’ll go. But those people who would get the blame—like Vice President Kamala Harris, or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, or Pete Buttigieg, or whoever the Democrats would install as their nominee—don’t want the blame either. So Biden will go on claiming he’s in this for the whole enchilada, until he isn’t. Then the die will be cast and the blame game will become a matter of how things turn out in November.
But there’s a bigger question now. Does the president have a debilitating disease that leaves many neurologists wondering how he could exhibit classic symptoms yet is just having a “bad night,” as Biden told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos? Seems sketchy to me.
The White House (I’d say I wanted Biden himself to do it, but I think we all know why he can’t) should answer these questions. If the president was examined by a Parkinson’s doc, then the people deserve to know what he found. I understand about health privacy and HIPAA and all that, but this isn’t your granddad, it’s the President of the United States. If he’s been diagnosed with Parkinson’s maybe it’s time for the 25th Amendment.
We should demand answers.
Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.
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