Washington Post urges Congress act to prevent another cover-up of president's health amid Biden revelations
The Washington Post urged legal mechanisms to prevent future cover-ups after a book claimed former President Biden's cognitive issues were concealed by his inner circle for years.
The Washington Post editorial board called for more oversight of the Oval Office on Wednesday to ensure a cover-up of the president's health doesn’t happen again following revelations in a bombshell book alleging the White House hid former President Joe Biden’s decline from the public.
"It now seems that, for a considerable time, Biden might have lacked the stamina and cognitive capacity the job demands — and that his family and closest aides concealed this from the public," the paper’s editorial board wrote.
"Their apparent decision to put personal loyalties ahead of their duty to the country must be reckoned with. A legal mechanism should be considered to ensure that this doesn’t happen again," the board proposed.
The former president's health is once again in the headlines after CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson's new book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," was released on Tuesday.
The book alleges that Biden’s inner circle concealed his cognitive decline for years and was released just days after news broke that Biden had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.
The Post relayed accounts from Tapper and Thompson's book detailing how Biden was showing issues with his memory as early as the 2020 campaign, with one Democrat who was involved in his campaign concluding that he was unfit for office.
From at least 2022, Biden was forgetting the names of his top aides and appearing incoherent at times, according to the book.
Biden's staff also reportedly adjusted his schedule to when he was at his sharpest because of these issues.
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"The country was fortunate not to have experienced a late-night crisis that he would have had trouble handling. It would be folly to count on such luck in the future," the board wrote.
"Can steps be taken to ensure that voters remain aware of their leaders’ frailties? This is a question for Congress: How should the government respond when a president seems to be operating with diminished faculties?" the editors asked.
The Post board proposed that Congress be empowered to "keep tabs on the president’s cognitive health — and to act when necessary."
"Ideally, Congress would create a sober, bipartisan commission to investigate ways to maintain transparency about the president’s health, mental and physical. Perhaps some objective cognitive testing should be required, in addition to a physical examination, with the results made public annually," the board suggested.
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The editorial comes as questions swirl around Biden’s cancer diagnosis and why the disease was not caught earlier.
On Monday, former Biden medical advisor Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, said that the former president likely had cancer since the beginning of his presidential term, if not longer.
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"He did not develop it in the last 100 to 200 days," Emanuel told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough on Monday. "I don't think there's any disagreement about that."
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