Biden’s fitness for office, a longtime fixation among conservatives, is dominating conversations on the right as Trump openly sows doubts about the health of the man who defeated him. One Republican senator recently texted an acquaintance his private suspicions that Biden, the oldest president in history, is mentally unwell. In on-the-record interviews, however, seven GOP senators who’ve met with Biden lately described him as cogent and well-versed on the issues they discussed. And none echoed the warnings many pro-Trump Republicans have issued about Biden amid the chatter about his stair-stepping acumen.

“In the two meetings I was in with the president, he was as sharp as a tack,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said in an interview.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who joined Capito at a February meeting with Biden on Covid relief, said he didn’t see anything amiss: “I visited with him in the Oval Office, and he seemed well-prepared and well-briefed for the meeting.”…

“My experience in that one setting was that the president performed well,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.). During his conversation with the 10 Republican senators who visited the White House, Moran recalled, the president didn’t rely on his staff or the vice president for information.