Offended Biden Offers Bizarre Response When Asked If He Has Taken a Cognitive Test
Former Vice President Joe Biden had a very bad day Wednesday.
When you’re running for president and you ask a reporter about illicit drug use and addiction in the middle of an interview about politics, it’s sure to leave people with more questions than answers.
That is especially true when the invocation of alleged drug use is your answer to a question about whether you’re mentally well enough to run the country.
Nonetheless, Biden went there Wednesday during an interview with CBS News correspondent Errol Barnett.
He joined Barnett for a remote interview in what should have been an easy layup for a Democrat.
Barnett is not a tough interviewer, if you’ve ever watched him.
The mild-mannered Englishman should have been a friendly face for Biden to encounter along his route to being crowned the nominee of his party.
Barnett is, after all, part of the same media apparatus that is working double-time to get Biden elected.
For the aforementioned reasons, the former vice president should have left the interview with an easy bucket.
But Biden seems to have a penchant for making insulting, inappropriate or downright bizarre statements when he’s pressed to answer actual questions.
And it isn’t in the same way in which President Donald Trump deals with hostile members of the media, either.
Biden’s off-the-rails interviews seem rooted in a confused sense of anger when he is asked what are essentially softball questions.
Barnett asked Biden if he had taken a test to measure his mental acuity, and the question had Biden fuming.
In his ensuing rant, he actually asked Barnett if he is a “junkie” who might be addicted to “cocaine.”
“No, I haven’t taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test? Come on, man,” Biden responded.
Apparently unsatisfied with “Lying dog-faced pony soldier” or “You ain’t black” being his signature insults, the presumptive Democratic nominee lashed out at Barnett.
“That’s like saying to you, before you got on this program, if you had taken a test were you taking cocaine or not,” Biden said.
“What do you think, huh? Are you a junkie?” he asked the CBS correspondent.
Biden followed up the bizarre altercation with a series of gaffes while attempting to utter the word “fitness.”
He told Barnett, “I am very willing to let the American people judge my physical, mental fil — my physical as well as my mental fil — fitness.”
Biden finally got the word out, but his word soup was overshadowed by the apparent attack on Barnett.
The shocking part about the interview is that Biden’s reaction is not shocking at all.
Trump, as Barnett pointed out early in the interview, has made an issue of Biden’s apparent cognitive decline.
He fumbled by handing the president further credibility on the issue.
Biden could have said “No, I have not had my cognitive ability tested,” and gone on to explain why he didn’t think such a test is necessary.
That in and of itself would have been odd, as Biden claimed his cognitive abilities are “constantly tested” in June, The Washington Times reported.
There were plenty of things Biden could have said to Barnett in that moment that could have sufficed, and none of them involved talking about illegal drugs.
For reasons known only to Biden, he felt the need to ask Barnett if he is a “junkie.”
This is who Democrats have picked to lead the country?
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