What Don't We Know?

And why don't we know it?

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The following was written by Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times. She is currently working on a book about ExxonMobil.

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The only remarkable thing about President Biden’s Nato press conference on Thursday was how happy the White House press corps seemed to return to its role as supplicant, beseeching the President to answer an array of anodyne questions on foreign policy. One of the reporters did press Mr. Biden on whether he would voluntarily take a medical test to judge his competency to serve as President.

The President’s answer was a clear “no.” It was not a “modified limited hang out,” to borrow public relations jargon from the Nixon era. It was a straight-up “stonewall.”

Since Joe Biden’s feeble performance in the debate, the nation’s leading news organizations have been lapdogs, begging for information about his dimming mental acuity and physical decline. It is true that immediately following the debate, editorial boards and columnists began demanding that Biden step down. But these entreaties fall under the banner of opinion. The public doesn’t need more opinion. Voters don’t need the hundreds of stories that have been published in recent days airing all manner of political prognostication on whether or when the President might quit the race.

What is needed are facts.

What exactly ails the President? If he is simply exhibiting the effects of old age or suffering the after effects of a brutal travel schedule and a common cold, prove it. Make his doctor and the rest of his medical team available for press interviews. Release the records from his medical examinations. The press howled when Donald Trump refused to release his tax records and gave scant health information. President Biden’s medical records are, at this moment, more consequential.