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As we draw closer to the November elections, more and more questions are being raised about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities and whether or not he has the mental and physical stamina it takes to run a country.

Just yesterday, my RedState colleague Nick Arama reported on how Biden looked “completely worn out and barely able to function” during a Labor Day AFL-CIO virtual event in Harrisburg, Pa. There was also Biden’s disastrous Pittsburgh speech from last week that went off the rails fast as he made multiple incoherent statements to a room where only a handful of socially-distanced reporters were present.

In a Monday interview with the Washington Free Beacon, former Biden stenographer Mike McCormick said the former vice president has changed a lot since his 8 years as President Obama’s second in command – and not in a way that should inspire confidence in his ability to lead the country should he win the presidential election:

“It is a complete difference from what he was in 2017,” Mike McCormick, who worked as a White House stenographer for 15 years and with Biden from 2011 to 2017, told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview. “He’s lost a step and he doesn’t seem to have the same mental acuity as he did four years ago.”

“He doesn’t have the energy, he doesn’t have the pace of his speaking,” McCormick said. “He’s a different guy.”

McCormick, who is also the author of Joe Biden Unauthorized: And the 2020 Crackup of the Democratic Party, also told the Free Beacon that unlike during the Obama-Biden administration when Biden would frequently go off script and “go straight from the hip” during speeches, he’s not doing that anymore – for a reason:

“And notice, he’s not doing that anymore,” he said. “He read that [Democratic National Committee speech] verbatim … it’s not Joe Biden anymore.”

The author also alleged that during a March 2011 meeting with then-Russian PM Vladimir Putin, Biden’s mic was actually cut off, the press lights were turned off, and the media were ushered out of the room because he started to ramble on too much for Putin’s liking:

“He basically got body slammed by Putin, really. I mean, I don’t know how else to describe it,” McCormick told the Free Beacon. “To me it was like, here’s our great foreign policy expert and he just got punk’d. And Vladimir Putin just had no fear or respect for him.”

Read the full interview McCormick did with the WFB here.

Though Biden’s handlers can cut basement media feeds short when things don’t go like they want them to, and can quickly usher Biden away from event after event in order to keep him from making more gaffes in front of reporters, concerns about his ability to lead are going to persist from now until election day. As they should.

If the media and Democrats are going to continue to do as they’ve done for four years by questioning President Trump’s mental fitness to lead, then it’s only fair for Biden to face the same questions.