A somewhat dazed US President Joe Biden, 79, appeared to lose his way to the White House following a tree-planting event on the South Lawn on Monday.
Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden planted a ceremonial elm tree in the afternoon in honor of Dale Haney, superintendent of the White House grounds, who earlier this month celebrated 50 years on the job. Footage showed that as the ceremony ended, Biden started walking in one direction, but suddenly stopped, seemingly confused, asking his security team, "Where do we go?"
As his staff ushered him onto the right course back to the White House, the Democratic POTUS is heard saying that he wanted to go in the other direction.
This incident comes as Joe Biden has been increasingly having difficulty navigating stages and finding their exit points, as was the case just last week at a rally in Pittsburgh. Biden initially turned to his right, then stopped in his tracks, and made a 180-degree turn to his left to find the exit. As he pointed towards it, he appeared to mumble to himself, before hustling off stage.
Before that, a similar gaffe occured following a United Nations speech in late September. Caught-on-camera awkward moments and mental slip-ups involving America's oldest sitting president are piling up, feeding into growing concerns about Biden's fitness for office. Republican representative for New York, Claudia Tenney recently suggested that Joe Biden was "not competent" to be President of the United States.
"This is really sad, but he reminds me of a Madame Tussauds wax figure. He comes out, and they turn him on, and he delivers talking points that are presented to him by his shadow government, the staff behind him. And he's really showing that he's not competent to do this most important job in our nation," Claudia Tenney said.
She added that she supported calls such as the one made by Republican representative from Texas, Ronny Jackson, a physician to former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, for Biden to take "a cognitive test."
Joe Biden, who turns 80 in November, conceded that it was fair to be concerned about his age in a recent interview. He also defended his own mental and physical fitness for office saying:
“... Right now - knock on wood - I do not want to jinx myself, I am in good health. All of my - everything physically about me is still functioning well, so you know, and mentally too, so.”
Biden then proceeded to add that he was a "great respecter of fate", and he "could get a disease tomorrow. I could, you know, drop dead tomorrow".
Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, are “somewhat concerned” about Joe Biden’s mental health, according to an Issues & Insights/TIPP poll published earlier in October. Only 33 percent of Americans would vote to reelect Biden for another term, a Fox News poll published on 16 October revealed.