Harris will be acting while Biden is under anesthesia.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, WASHINGTON — President of the United States (US) Joe Biden will hand the baton of power to the Vice President Kamala Harris while he is under anesthesia for routine colonoscopy. With this handover, Harris will become the first black woman of Central Asian descent to serve as US president.
As quoted from CNN, Friday (19/11) White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Harris will work from his office in the West Wing while Biden is under anesthesia. Biden, who will turn 79 on Saturday (20/11), underwent a routine medical examination at the Walter Reed Medical Center since he took office as President.
It is one of the vice president’s duties to take over while the president undergoes medical procedures that require anesthesia. Former Vice President Dick Cheney did so several times when President George W. Bush underwent routine colonoscopy.
Article 3 of the 25th US Constitutional Amendment says the President may send a letter to the chair of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate Pro Tempore (PPT) stating they are ‘unable to carry out their duties and powers’. “And until he sends them a written declaration to the contrary, powers and duties are transferred to the Vice President as Acting President,” the US Amendment writes.
PTT is the second highest office in the United States Senate after the chairman of the Senate. This position is usually held by the most senior Senator from the majority faction in the Senate.
Earlier this year Donald Trump’s former White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham suggested the former president underwent a medical check-up with Walter Reed in 2019. But he has remained tight-lipped about handing power to then-Vice President Mike Pence.
In his book ‘I’ll Take Your Questions Now’, Grisham does not use the term colonoscopy but strongly implies Trump’s trip to the US president’s medical facility to do it. He said the purpose of Trump’s visit which fueled weeks of speculation was a “very common procedure” in which “patients are put to sleep”.
He wrote that Bush had also carried out similar procedures during his reign. In his book, according to Grisham at that time Trump did not want to hand over power to Pence while he was drugged because he kept the visit a secret.
“(Trump) also doesn’t want to be the butt of jokes, on television,” Grisham wrote.
Biden is the oldest US president to have been sworn in in the first term. The latest development of his health condition was released two years ago when he launched his presidential election campaign on 19 December. At that time Biden’s primary doctor since 2009, Dr. Kevin O’Connor said Biden was a ‘healthy, strong 77-year-old man’. n Lintar Satria
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