Did you have this on your 2024 Bingo card? I sure didn’t. A Democrat neurologist who treats Parkison’s patients went on NBC News — NBC NEWS!! — to talk about Joe Biden’s condition — and it was very, very bad for the president.
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Dr. Tom Pitts works with Parkinson’s patients in a clinical setting in Dayton, Ohio. His specialty is listed as Neurology Clinical Interpretation, and although he has never met Biden, he said he could diagnose him with Parkinson’s disease “from across the mall” — it’s that obvious.
“Oh, yeah, I see [patients like Biden] 20 times a day in the clinic. I mean, it’s ironic because he has just the classic features of neurodegeneration,” observed Pitts. I don’t know what’s ironic about that, but let’s continue.
He noted one of Biden’s symptoms, word-finding difficulties. “That’s not, ‘Oh, I couldn’t find the word.’ That’s from degeneration of the word-retrieval area.” He dismissed the idea that the deficits we’ve seen in Biden are related to his history of stuttering. “No, this is not a palatal issue or a speech discrepancy,” which is very different from actual word retrieval, “where you pick a similar question or talk around the issue.”
He also noted Biden’s “rigidity” and “loss of arm swing” when walking. “Lordotically [related to a curving inward of the lower back], you notice when he turns, it’s kind of end-block turning,” meaning he pivots on one foot. “It’s not a quick turn.” The video below shows examples of this. “So that’s one of the hallmarks of Parkinson’s, is rigidity and bradykinesia, slow movement.”
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“And he has that hallmark, especially with the low voices… a small, monotone voice like this over time, is a hallmark of Parkinsonism,” he continued. There are examples of this in the video as well.
Asked if Parkinson’s is difficult to diagnose, Pitts said, “Slow movement, rigidity, mass faces, hypophonia. I mean, if a med student did not pick Parkinson’s on the test they’d be remediated.” He added that a member of the U.S. military with Biden’s symptoms “would be med-boarded out.”
Pitts conceded, “We’re finding [word] retrieval doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t know what you want to say. What I cannot comment on is his ability to make good decisions. His motor symptoms are degenerating. He has Parkinsosisms. That is a fact. You know, he has the generation of the brain.”
“Show me the MRI,” he challenged Biden’s doctors. “Show me he doesn’t” have Parkinson’s. “You know, put you put your money where your mouth is. He definitely has it.”
He thinks both Biden and Donald Trump should complete the standard four-hour neuropsychological testing—the hallmark test for cognitive performance (as opposed to the shorter Montreal Cognitive Assessment Trump claims to have passed).
“So, for example, they may have you say, like, say as many words you can in a minute that start with ‘F.'” Patients also do block-building, and a trail-drawing test and complete retrieval exercises. “I may, I may say ‘cup’ and have you recall it three minutes later.”
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These are done with a professional PhD in neuropsychology,” he said. “It’s a full day. We tell people, ‘Bring a snack.'”
NBC host Lester Holt asked, “You’re a Democrat, you’re a doctor. You sound like you’re frustrated with what the White House is saying.”
“Well, because, you know, I’m an American before everything. And I look at it and say, when I used to see Russia, the Soviet Union, North Korea, when they just make up outrageous things, you know, like when North Korea can’t keep the lights on, and they say, ‘Oh, you know, it was some faulty power thing.’ I kind of hate that kind of stuff.”
Then he landed a death blow on the Democrat Party: “They had four years. My own party had four years to find—you know, this was a wreck in slow motion. And they had four years to find—out of 350 million Americans—one person that could take [Biden’s] place. And here we are, the day before school, trying to do the homework and replace a guy who’s got a neurodegenerative disease.”
You know what they say: It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup. If Biden had just come out and told the American people what he was dealing with, this whole debacle might have been avoided, especially if he could prove that his deficits were merely physical.
While I have you here, I wanted to let you know about a few things coming up at PJ Media in the next week. On Wednesday, we will launch the first episode of my new podcast with Lincoln Brown, “The Intersection of Faith and Politics.” This will be our first podcast on the free side of the paywall, and we’re super excited about it! If you’d like to help defray the costs of the podcasts and all the other content we offer at PJ Media, why not become a VIP member? You can do it for less than $2/month using the special podcast promo code INTERSECTION for 50% off your membership. Sign up here.
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Also, the Republican National Convention is happening next week. We’ll be covering events on Wednesday and Thursday with a very special VodkaPundit Drunkblog and a group liveblog (you’ll have to wait until Wednesday to find out who shows up). See you soon!