President Biden shared a joke with Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler (N.Y.) about being called “cognitively impaired,” following his passionate State of the Union address.
The two Democrats conversed on the floor of the House chamber after the address, along with other Democrats.
“Nobody’s going to talk about ‘cognitively impaired’ now,” Nadler said to Biden.
Biden chuckled and replied, “I sometimes wish there was cognitive impairment.”
The president faced a challenge going into the address to present himself as mentally sharp and energized, in order to reassure voters ahead of November.
Polling has shown that Americans believe the president, 81, is too old for the job, and those concerns were heightened when special counsel Robert Hur’s report on his handling of classified documents referred to him as an elderly man with memory problems.
Biden on Thursday used his influential position to criticize former President Trump and focus on issues that will shape the general election campaign throughout his address, which lasted just over an hour.
The address, sometimes resembling a campaign speech, covered topics such as the war in Ukraine, threats to democracy, the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and threats to abortion access and reproductive health care.
