
Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, said on Wednesday that “it wouldn’t hurt” for President Joe Biden to go through a cognitive test.
Her comments, made during an appearance on CNN, come as many people are questioning whether Biden is mentally fit to serve another four years in the White House.
Questions about the president’s mental capacity have swarmed in small circles for the last few years, but rose to be a major issue in national circles following the president’s horrific performance at the first presidential debate last month.
That has led many people to say that Biden should take a cognitive test and reveal the results to the public as a way to back up his claims that he’s fine.”
As Whitmer said of the test:
“I don’t think that it would hurt.”
She added that she believes presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump should do the same thing.
And while she added that Biden’s performance was “not a great success” at the debate, she also pushed back on the calls from people to step aside from the 2024 campaign.
As Whitmer said:
“He shows up every day and fights for the American public. He cares about other people more than he cares about himself, and that’s precisely why I think this moment where we have Donald Trump, who’s been convicted of 34 felonies, who cares only about Donald Trump, we can’t lose sight of how high these stakes are.
“We have a field, and unless one person, Joe Biden, makes an alternative decision, this is the field, and we’ve got to go.”
Calls for Biden to step aside from his re-election campaign are growing in Washington and throughout the country. An increasing number of Democratic politicians are either directly calling for Biden to leave the race, or are intimating that he needs to seriously contemplate it.
In addition, major Democratic donors have announced they would be halting any more funding toward the Biden reelection campaign until he steps down. That includes famous actor George Clooney, who called for Biden to step aside in a recent op-ed he wrote in The New York Times.
Whitmer has been named as a potential replacement for Biden should the president decide not to run for reelection. This week alone, she’s made major appearances on media outlets and released a new memoir.
That being said, if Biden were to step down, his most likely replacement in the Democratic Party would be Vice President Kamala Harris. She’s already in the White House and is much younger than Biden.
It’s possible that if that does happen, Whitmer could be named Harris’ running mate.
With Biden not making any official announcements that he’s stepping aside, though, Whitmer is publicly backing who is right now the Democrats’ leading candidate.
Ultimately, she said her main concern is that:
“We are spending a lot of energy not on Donald Trump and the existential threat before us, and that gives me a great deal of concern.
“I understand that some are playing fantasy football and want to just pick a couple of random leaders that they like across the country and design a ticket. That’s just not how this works. We have a president who’s gotten a nomination, who’s earned it.”