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“At a certain point there needs to be a serious and empathetic conversation about Biden’s relatively frequent, confused, irritable inability to complete coherent thoughts. It’s not about a stutter. Watching him speak a mere four years ago makes that clear.”

Joe Biden’s clear mental decline needs to be discussed with openness and compassion, not only because President Trump has brandished the uncomfortable issue as a primary line of attack against the Democratic front runner, but because the president must be able to handle the rigors of leading a nation.

This is so sad. Here @JoeBiden says to the crowd in South Carolina that he is “running for the United States Senate” and that if they don’t like him they can “vote for the other Biden.” I honestly wish he would’ve retired & not subjected himself to the rigors of this campaign. pic.twitter.com/mygFnsrdjC — Shaun King (@shaunking) February 25, 2020

Joe Biden genuinely has dementia and that’s not at all funny. It’s sad and he needs help and to not be exploited by a corrupt establishment looking to hold on to power by any means necessary. https://t.co/APBqfDOwTy — Secular Talk (@KyleKulinski) March 5, 2020

The former Vice President’s cognitive problems are frequently dismissed as “gaffes” by commentators, but Biden has repeatedly demonstrated the textbook symptoms of dementia, including memory problems, increased confusion, reduced concentration, and rapid mood changes.

Biden confuses his sister with his wife https://t.co/Xp0Eqg7XoN — 29 U.S.C. § 157 (@OrganizingPower) March 4, 2020

Joe Biden, who has dementia, claims he was “arrested” in South Africa visiting Nelson Mandela pic.twitter.com/5aZALEVL6y — 29 U.S.C. § 157 (@OrganizingPower) March 1, 2020

Here’s Biden saying “150 million people have been killed since 2007″ by guns, which would be half the US population.

pic.twitter.com/PTOZvih5xN — 29 U.S.C. § 157 (@OrganizingPower) March 1, 2020

To be fair, President Trump has also faced scrutiny concerning his own cognitive decline, with 350 mental health professionals sending a letter to Congress warning that his mental state was deteriorating in December. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is 78, also had a heart attack in October, and whoever the next president is, they will be the oldest in United States history. But while Trump and Sanders have already faced questions about their physical fitness for office, the former Vice President’s condition has so far evaded real media scrutiny.

At a certain point there needs to be a serious and empathetic conversation about Biden’s relatively frequent, confused, irritable inability to complete coherent thoughts. It’s not about a stutter. Watching him speak a mere four years ago makes that clear. Hope this happens soon! — Cody Johnston (@drmistercody) March 5, 2020

Biden displayed far greater ease articulating complex thoughts as recently as 2016, as demonstrated by his cogent analysis of the last Democratic primary:

Here’s Joe Biden in 2008 saying basically the same stuff he says today, but compare his delivery, his ability to put sentences together, to follow a train of thought not just through a sentence but through a complex argument. https://t.co/WnVFNG8jk9 — Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) March 5, 2020

Progressive writers Glenn Greenwald and Matt Stoller have criticized establishment Democrats for pushing forward a candidate who is in clear cognitive decline.

Pssst, while you're here...

The steadfast, wilful refusal of Dem political & media elites to address what is increasingly visible to the naked eye — Biden’s serious cognitive decline — is frightening indeed, not only for what it portends for 2020 but what it says about the ease of snapping them into line: https://t.co/InZzCja99x — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 5, 2020

Democratic insiders know Biden has cognitive decline issues. They joke about it. They don’t care. — Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 6, 2020

Trump frequently mocks Biden’s cognitive problems, calling him “Sleepy Joe” and recently saying, “They’re going to put him into a home and other people are going to be running the country,” at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday.

“Tomorrow, voters in states across the nation for Super Tuesday — not Super Thursday. Oh, he said Super Thursday! You can’t do these things. Can you imagine if I said Super Thursday? I would be over, right? I would be over,” Trump said at the rally, calling Biden’s mistakes “a little scary.”

Pro-Trump commentators like Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson have begun to bring attention to Biden’s deteriorating mental condition and speculated what role it would play in a general election:

“I think contrary to what a lot of people think, I think Trump and Trump supporters, like me, if we want Trump to win reelection, I think Biden is a much better bet,” Coulter told Breitbart in an interview on Tuesday. “Bernie … has a lot of appealing populist issues. He may be some nut Fidel Castro-admirer, but he’s funny. He draws huge crowds. The media will protect Biden in a way that no Republican with that level of senile dementia that Biden has could run for president, but the media is a powerful force. They’ll cover it up, they won’t show us those.”

The GOP is already diagnosing Biden with dementia. Full stop. And all he’s doing is giving them more material. This is like an electoral asteroid hurdling towards the Earth, and people are pretending it doesn’t exist. It exists.pic.twitter.com/97R8tdFvKd — Samuel D. Finkelstein II (@CANCEL_SAM) March 5, 2020

Republican talk show host Bob Lonsberry similarly pointed out what he described as dementia in the former Vice President, arguing that he should be treated with “honor and care” rather than used in the “obvious efforts by the party’s closeted leadership to hand him the nomination.”

“I’m not trying to sandbag Biden to protect the interests of my party or candidate,” Lonsberry wrote in an op-ed on Tuesday.

“I am merely saying what we all are thinking. The man is out on his feet. Look at his eyes. He’s not always all there. And in that situation, for any person, you don’t push them forward to achieve your political ends, you put your arm around them and get them help. Empathy and concern for Joe Biden don’t express themselves as support for his decades-long ambition to be president. They manifest as a desire to protect him and the nation from the degrading of his abilities.”