Biden Fitness Complicity

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROSE. Mr. Speaker, as much as the White House would like to move on from the terrible debate performance we saw less than 2 weeks ago, it is still on the minds of many Americans, including my own. Like many, I am not only concerned about who is in the Oval Office in 2025, but I am concerned about the weeks and months between now and Inauguration Day.

The American people deserve to know their Commander in Chief can do the job. They deserve to know why he requires pictures of stages and podiums before he attends events. They deserve to have their many, many questions answered.

Unfortunately, President Biden has decided that one recorded, in- person interview and a politically charged letter will suffice.

We would be well served not to forget Special Counsel Robert Hur's report from February describing the President's memory as significantly limited. More importantly, we must not forget his conclusion that a potential trial over the President's apparently intentional illegal possession of classified documents would result in a jury essentially feeling bad for a forgetful old man.

Following that frank and damning report, the President's chief of staff responded by saying: No one works harder and asks tougher questions than the President.

In hindsight, it appears he was willing to surrender his personal credibility in an attempt to keep the President's cognitive maladies hidden. Mitch Landrieu, national co-chair of the Biden campaign, said of the President: ``He's on his game.''

Again, in hindsight, perhaps the game he was referring to might have been shuffleboard.

Weeks before the debate, we saw the headline ``Biden Appears to Freeze,'' detailing an event from the White House. We have endured 3\1/ 2\ years of similar stories.

Just days into his Presidency, The New York Times published a story titled: ``The Many Ways That Joe Biden Trips Over His Own Tongue.''

In May of 2022, The Washington Post published an article titled: ``Three theories on Biden's repeated Taiwan gaffes.''

The one I remember most is from Reuters 2 years ago which reads: ``Gaffe or insight? Deciphering Biden's unguarded answers.''

The American people should not have to decipher anything, Mr. Speaker. I, along with many of the Tennesseans I represent, believe we are still the shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan referenced.

In this country, the First Amendment enables us to ask frank questions. In this country, we hold our elected officials to account.

Many of us remember 2 months before the debate when the President literally read the words: ``Four more years. Pause'' at an event.

We also recall this year when President Biden mistakenly claimed he was Vice President during the pandemic.

I, along with many other Members of the House of Representatives on our side of the aisle, have expressed our serious concerns with what strongly appears to be a debilitating, cognitive decline for quite a while now. Yet, those concerns were dismissed by the mainstream media as rightwing propaganda for all these years, and Congressional Democrats made similar allegations or remained silent altogether. They all knew these concerns with the President's cognitive limitations were credible.

Now, since the debate, the American people share these concerns, too. They are used to worrying about the consequences of the open-border policies of this administration and the crippling inflation that the administration's policies have produced, but now they are also concerned about whether he can even withstand the job itself.

Since the debate, we have heard nothing but weak excuses: a cold, a lack of sleep, jet lag from travel that took place 15 days before. The list continues to grow.

Those who have spread the notion that President Biden is as sharp as a tack and at the top of his game will have to answer for this big coverup. Indeed, they are complicit in the credible anxiety that the American people feel.

If we suffer a major national security incident which our impaired President fails to handle properly, they will be complicit in something much worse.

Mr. Speaker, it is past time for our President to pass the baton on to another and for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have helped to perpetuate this coverup to switch course and do the right thing.

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