From awkward gaffes to that doomed debate: how it all went wrong for Potus

President Joe Biden has called off his re-election bid after many weeks of nail-biting speculation about the 81-year-old's fitness for office, with myriad prominent Democrats - including movie stars like George Clooney and trusted political allies like Rep Adam Schiff – pushing for him to drop out of the race against challenger Donald Trump in favour of a younger candidate.

- JUSTIN ROHRLICH

Biden’s health has been a concern since his unsuccessful 2008 run at the presidency, some 20 years after surviving two life-threatening brain aneurysms. His cognitive abilities have been on voters’ minds since he took office in January 2021.

A full physical exam during Biden’s first year in the White House found him to be “a healthy, vigorous, 78-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the president, to include those as chief executive, head of state and commander in chief,” according to personal physician Dr Kevin O’Connor. In a sixpage summary of the checkup, O’Connor chalked up Biden’s “perceptibly stiffer and less fluid” gait to mild nerve damage, and an “increasing frequency and severity of ‘throat clearing’ and coughing” to esophageal reflux.

As the year progressed, Biden’s health came under increasing scrutiny. After falling off a bicycle that June near a home he owns in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, an uninjured Biden said his foot had gotten caught on a toe clip and told the accompanying press pool, “I’m good”.

During his successful 2020 campaign, he reassured the public that he considered himself a placeholder who would restore normalcy to the Oval Office while the Democratic Party developed fresh candidates for the next election. The apparently selfless notion was also the practical way forward: a mere five in 10 registered Democrats said in an October 2022 AP-NORC poll that they wanted Biden to run for a second term.

In June 2023, Biden fell on stage after tripping over a sandbag at the US Air Force Academy graduation ceremony. A few months after that, speculation about Biden’s health intensified when, at a Manhattan campaign event, he recounted an anecdote, then repeated the same story again “nearly word for word,” according to a pool report.