Oh great.
The world is going to hell in a hand basket and Axios reports the biggest concern in the Biden White House: https://www.axios.com/2023/09/
Scoop: Biden team’s don’t-let-him-trip mission
Reporter Alex Thompson alerts this:
“President Biden and his campaign are working on a critical project for his re-election bid: Make sure he doesn’t trip.
Driving the news: As voters express deep concerns about the 80-year-old president’s age and fitness for office, Biden’s team is taking extra steps to prevent him from stumbling in public — as he did in June, when he tripped over a sandbag at the Air Force Academy.With a physical therapist, Biden has been doing exercises to improve his balance as far back as November 2021.
Since his stumble in June, he has been wearing tennis shoes more often to avoid slipping — and using the short stairs on Air Force One, entering the plane on a lower deck than before.
Why it matters: Democrats, including some in the administration, are terrified that Biden will have a bad fall — with a nightmare scenario of it happening in the weeks before the November 2024 election.
…Biden’s balance difficulties are likely the result of what his physician has diagnosed as “a combination of significant spinal arthritis” and “mild post-fracture foot arthritis.”
Biden works out many mornings with physical therapist Drew Contreras, who also worked with former President Obama.
Biden’s doctor has recommended exercises for balance, which he called “proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.”
What the maneuvers entail is unclear.
“I have never heard the term ‘proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.’ It is not a clinical term in standard use,” said Professor James Gordon, associate dean and chair of the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California.
Asked for more detail, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told Axios: ‘This isn’t new — it was proactively and transparently disclosed in a 2021 report from the president’s doctor and again this year.'”
And that’s before we even get to the decidedly separate issue of his cognitive failings.
The Biden team’s real problem is that as president Biden is followed everywhere by television cameras. His tumbles are decidedly public, whether walking off the stage at an Air Force Academy event or simply falling off his bicycle. And who knows what happens behind the scenes when the cameras are not there.
During the Franklin Roosevelt administration, the White House staff reached an agreement with the press not to photograph FDR when the crippled and wheel chair bound president was lifted by Secret Service in and out of cars or onto a stage.
Alas for Joe Biden that was in the long ago 1930’s and 1940’s. Today’s media is not even that close to docile.
And they and who knows who else are watching. Cameras – and cell phones – in hand.