Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley addressed President Biden’s age in a recent 60 Minutes interview.

The president’s age, along with that of former President Donald Trump, have become points of concern for many ahead of the 2024 election. Mr. Biden is now 80 and Trump, the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, is 77. Political opponents and even some allies have portrayed them as too old to be president.

“I didn’t comment on the former president’s mental health, physical health and I’m not going to comment on the current president’s mental health or physical health. I think that’s highly inappropriate for the senior officer of the United States military to do that,” Milley said.

Milley was nominated to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Trump and served in the role under Biden until he left office at the end of September.

Milley, in his role as the nation’s highest ranking military officer, regularly met with Mr. Biden. He said the president was “fine” each time.

“How people interpret that is up to them, but I engage with him frequently and alert, sound, does his homework, reads the papers, reads all the read-ahead material. And he’s very, very engaging in issues of very serious matters of war and peace and life and death,” Milley said. “So if the American people are worried about an individual who is, you know, someone who’s making decisions of war and peace and has access to, you know, makes the decisions of nuclear weapons and that sort of thing, I think they can rest easy.”

  • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The main comments seem to think Milley WAS commenting on Biden’s health after saying he wouldn’t and I disagree.

    He said Biden read the prep material, was aware of the current issues, and took national security matters very seriously. You could extrapolate that to mean he’s mentally well but I don’t think that’s a necessary conclusion and it’s definitely not a direct comment on the president’s health.

    No one likes how old the president is, but Milley wasn’t going against his own words here in the excerpt that I read.