In the wake of Joe Biden’s poor performance at the first presidential debate, there has been a renewed focus on the people around the president.
Biden named Kevin O’Connor, DO, the White House physician just days after his inauguration in January 2021, but the relationship between the two men extends much further back. That closeness is now being called into question.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn took a look at the new reporting about Dr. O’Connor and how it impacts his credibility.
O’Connor and Biden
O’Connor’s relationship with the Biden family began in 2009. He was an Army colonel on the White House medical staff when he became Biden’s government-assigned military doctor during his tenure as vice president.
During that time, he apparently became close with the several members of the Biden family. New reporting from Politico points to a deposition given by the now-president’s sister-in-law Sara Biden that confirmed O’Connor often gave medical advice to her and others. “Colonel O’Connor was actually a friend and he — we would frequently ask for his recommendations if any of us had a medical issue,” she said.
Politico notes O’Connor’s relationship with the Bidens “famously intensified” as he worked closely with Beau Biden during his battle with terminal brain cancer from 2013 to 2015.
Leaked emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop show O’Connor emailed about a dozen members of the family to invite them to a retirement ceremony ahead of his planned July 2017 departure from the military. “You’ve all been a really important part of my life for the past eight years,” O’Connor wrote, “and I hope that will continue.”
And continue it did. Politico reports that O’Connor took several meetings with Biden’s brother Jim Biden in 2017 when the younger Biden was “pursuing health care ventures with a troubled hospital chain, Americore.” Correspondences from that time show that the domain for O’Connor’s email address, “CelticMD.com,” contained a reference to Biden’s Secret Service codename, Celtic.
Experts told the outlet that “the close personal bonds between the Bidens and O’Connor intensify the inherent conflicts in relying on the White House physician to accurately convey the state of his employer’s health to the public.”
White House Damage Control
O’Connor has always offered a rosy assessment of the president’s health, but he was forced to fend off critics this week after The New York Post and Alex Berenson discovered a Parkinson’s expert from Walter Reed Medical Center, Dr. Kevin Cannard, visited the White House some nine times in the last year.
Late Monday, the Biden administration released a letter from O’Connor seeking to downplay Cannard’s appearances at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. O’Connor claimed he “was the neurological specialist that examined President Biden for each of his annual physicals,” and reiterated that “President Biden has not seen a neurologist outside of his annual physical.”
O’Connor stressed that Biden’s latest physical found no signs of Parkinson’s disease, but it is not clear he would ever have to report otherwise. Jacob Appel, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York who has studied the political dilemmas posed by presidents’ health, told Politico that HIPAA forbids physicians from disclosing medical information that a patient wants to keep secret – even if that patient is president of the United States
“We’re all going to have to pretend, I guess, that we believe this medical doctor from the White House that the… Parkinson’s guy only ever examined Biden on his annual physical and all those other visits were for some unnamed other person at the White House who they will not give us any information about,” Megyn said. “The vast majority of the visits followed a very public incident with President Biden showing cognitive decline, [but] they won’t answer anything. We’re supposed to just accept this doctoral letter like he’s fine.”
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 832 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.