Joe Biden's Disastrous Debate Points to Key Issue, Age Expert Says

President Joe Biden has faced questions throughout his time in office over his mental health, and his performance at the first 2024 presidential debate did not help allay concerns.

Biden, 81, the oldest sitting president in U.S. history, has been repeatedly criticized for his gaffes and demeanor at public events. The White House has dispelled attacks that Biden is unfit to serve due to such appearances, although Democrats are facing a new front after Thursday's debate in which the president experienced several stumbles and spoke in a low, raspy voice while wrangling on stage with former President Donald Trump. A Biden aide previously told Newsweek that the president was battling a cold during the debate.

According to Dr. Bradley Willcox, geriatrics expert and researcher at the Kuakini Medical Center in Hawaii, Biden's debate blunders were not a sign of a person in mental decline. Rather, given the president's well-documented struggle with a stutter for most of his life, Willcox pointed to the impact that aging has on motor and speech functions and how that shone through last week.

"His stutter is coming back," Willcox told Newsweek. "It's just common as you age ... As you get older, the brain connections that are the cause of stutters, and inhibit the stutter when you're younger, are not as strong. But this is motor-speech areas [of the brain]."

How Biden's Age Could Impact His Speech

Willcox, also principal investigator of Kuakini's Biomedical Research Excellence for Translational Research on Aging, told Newsweek that it's not uncommon for those with a stutter to struggle to control their speech as they age. Biden has been public about struggling with the speech condition since he was in grade school.

"[The president] had a verbal stutter when he was a kid, and he worked really hard to overcome it," Willcox added.

The aging expert highlighted that interruptions with Biden's speech during Thursday's debate were in line with symptoms of someone with a stutter: increased repetitions, prolongations of speech and word blocks.

"You know, even if you're a 10-year-old, that makes people think you look less intelligent or less with [a stutter]," Willcox said. "Especially as you age—everyone thinks it's due to aging, and certainly, you can worsen with age. But it doesn't mean that his [Biden's] cognition is impaired."

Willcox also explained that there are several cognitive functions shown to improve as a person ages, such as verbal memory, inductive reasoning and vocabulary, which, he said, are all important parts of decision-making.

"Those are factors I don't think most of us kind of understand in the general public, and we all have this ageism to a certain extent," he added.

Substance Versus Showmanship

Willcox said that Thursday's debate was a "classic case of substance versus showmanship," describing Trump as an "amazing orator" who could "tell a full face lie and the lie detector would never go off."

"I think it's important to publish the text of what both presidential candidates had during their speeches and one can pick it apart," he added, noting that while Biden's delivery was "bad," voters should make their choice on what was really said.

Supporters of Biden have downplayed the president's poor debate performance as any reason for alarm before November's election, and many critics have noted that Trump spent most of his debate diverting moderators' questions and repeating falsehoods that he has used throughout his campaign, including on core issues like abortion, immigration and trade. CNN, the host of the debate, tallied 30 lies from Trump, while Biden reportedly made nine false or misleading statements.

The age of both candidates has played a role this election year. A majority of American voters have indicated that they believe Trump, who recently turned 78, and Biden are both too old to serve another term in office.

Before Thursday's debate, aging expert S. Jay Olshansky told Newsweek that the American public would not be able to "reliably gauge" the candidates' mental fitness and that such evaluations can only be made by a physician.

Biden's doctor said in his annual health summary released in February that the president "remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency." Trump posted a letter in November 2023 to his Truth Social account of a medical report that said the former president's health is "excellent" overall, although several experts raised speculation on the report's legitimacy.