There is a raging debate over what exactly ails Joe Biden, and whether because of it, he should step aside as the Democratic presidential nominee.
He and his handlers say nothing is wrong other than old age and losing a few steps.
Most Americans and key Dems are more alarmed.
He’s going on 82, and they see severe signs of aging or worse, like the early stages of any number of neurological illnesses in his slurred speech and wonky body movements.
They see the leader of the free world — but only between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
They don’t think he should seek re-election because they don’t think he’s healthy enough to win.
I can’t tell you whether Joe Biden will eventually succumb to the intraparty pressure and drop out of the race.
What I can say one thing with absolute certainty: If he were the chief executive, not of the country but of a publicly traded company, things would be much different.
What ails Biden would have been disclosed because that’s the law.
He would have been forced to step down, not after his recent disastrous debate performance, but years earlier when he first showed obvious signs of not being right.
Unlike his top advisers, VP Kamala Harris, or flacks that have covered up Biden’s health issues, executives and board members who lie about their principal’s ailments face various civil and even criminal penalties.
They have a legal “fiduciary” duty to keep those who own their stock in the know about potentially market-moving events, aka “material events.”
The CEO’s health is one of the big ones.
“If a CEO presented a speech or was in a meeting and exhibited similar behavior, the board would be meeting in hours to find a new leader. These are hard grueling jobs,” one corporate boss and Biden supporter told me.
And it’s the law.
Yes I know, being the president is much different than a CEO running a company.
The president vows to uphold the Constitution; the CEO, his executive team and board of directors vow to uphold the nation’s securities laws.
Still, it’s kind of an oddity that public shareholders — people who hold stock in a company — have more legal and disclosure rights when it comes to the health of the person protecting their investment than the American people have when it comes to the health of the person in charge of protecting their country.
Council of elders
Biden’s staff, his wife and family can obfuscate all day (and they do) about the true nature of the president’s health, throw misdirection at all those visits by a neurologist in recent months, deny the obvious about his stamina, essentially gaslight the American people with (until recently) the help of the DC press corps without any legal retribution.
It’s something that securities lawyers and CEOs — again including those who support Biden — are pretty astonished about because they just run companies and he runs the entire country.
Recall JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon, who might be the most successful CEO in a generation, disclosed not just a heart ailment in 2020 but his throat cancer years earlier.
Dimon survived both and if you know him, he was in much better physical and mental health than the current occupant of the White House.
Undemocratic party
Based on Biden’s physical condition, most people question whether he can handle the rigors of the 2024 presidential race, much less survive four years if re-elected.
It’s a scandal that is just starting to play itself out now — with most of the mainstream media exposed and embarrassed that they ignored signs of Biden’s worsening health.
They feared it would help elect their worst nightmare: that monster known as Donald Trump.
They also deprived the American people of a presidential nominee that actually won a primary.
If Biden does resign, Harris or any number of possible replacements would be elected by the party’s elite at next month’s convention.
Often lost in the political machinations is Joe Biden’s personal ordeal; it’s sad watching him suffer.
The growing consensus is that Biden is suffering from Parkinson’s, a neurological disease, where the patient experiences slurring of speech and inability to walk and in later stages uncontrollable body movements.
It’s something I have some experience with since my dad, a construction worker, suffered from a severe form of it because of various head injuries while on the job.
He died six years after being diagnosed at just 54 years old.
Many Parkinson’s patients don’t have dementia; their plight is having functioning cognitive abilities with an inability to articulate words normally or move the right way when the brain signals the nervous system.
It’s frustrating to be trapped inside a body that is undergoing such trauma.
It explains why Biden is easily angered, why he looks frozen.
And yes, it’s a scandal that Biden is allowed to continue with this charade, with many layers on top of lying to the American people.
Where is his family, or his top Cabinet members, or vice president performing an intervention or lawmakers invoking or calling for the 25th Amendment and stopping what is tantamount to elder abuse?
If Joe Biden were CEO they would have to, or they may be going to jail.
Charles Gasparino is the author of the forthcoming book “Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America.”
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