WASHINGTON, DC—U.S. Representative John Rose (TN-06) spoke on the House Floor Wednesday about the anxiety facing many Americans about whether President Biden is fit to serve in the nation’s highest office.
The full remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below:
Mister Speaker, as much as the White House would like to move on from the terrible debate performance we saw less than two weeks ago, it is still on the minds of many Americans, including my own. Like many, I’m not only concerned about who is in the oval office in 2025, but I’m 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 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’d 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 mishandling 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 President Biden.” In hindsight, it appears he was willing to surrender his personal credibility in an attempt to keep the presidents’ cognitive maladies hidden.
Mitch Landrieu, national co-chair of the Biden campaign, said of the president – quote – “he’s on his game.” Again, in hindsight, perhaps the game he was referring to was shuffle board.
Weeks before the debate, we saw the headline “Biden Appears to Freeze,” detailing an event from the White House. We’ve endured three and a half years of similar stories.
Just days into his presidency, the New York Times published a story titled “The Many Ways 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.” One I remember most is from Reuters two years ago, which reads “Gaffe or insight? Deciphering Biden’s Unguarded Answers.”
The American people should not have to decipher anything, Mister Speaker. I, along with many of the Tennesseans I represent, believe we are still the Shining City on a Hill 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, two 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 concern with what strongly appears to be a debilitating cognitive decline for a while now. Yet those concerns were dismissed by the mainstream media as right-wing propaganda all these years, and Congressional Democrats made similar allegations or remained silent altogether. But they all knew these concerns with the president’s cognitive limitations were credible. Now since the debate, the American people share those concerns, too.
They’re used to worrying about the consequences of the open-border policies of this president and the crippling inflation his policies have produced, but now they’re also concerned about whether he can even withstand the job itself. Since the debate, we’ve heard nothing but weak excuses. A cold. A lack of sleep. Jet lag from travel that took place 15 days before to the debate. The list continues to grow.
Those who have spread the notion that President Biden is “sharp as a tack” and “at the top of his game” will have to answer for this Big Cover Up. Indeed, they are complicit in the credible anxiety the American people feel. If we suffer a major national security incident which our impaired president fails to handle properly, they’ll be complicit in something much worse.
To our president, I say it’s past time for you to pass the baton onto another, and to the vast majority of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have helped to perpetuate this cover up, I say switch course and do the right thing.
You can watch the speech here.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://johnrose.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-rose-criticizes-those-complicit-hiding-president-bidens-health-americans