Kamala Harris will be the first woman with presidential power while Biden undergoes a routine colonoscopy

(CNN) – US President Joe Biden will temporarily transfer power to Vice President Kamala Harris while she is under anesthesia for a routine colonoscopy, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

“Vice President Kamala Harris will be working from her West Wing office during this time,” Psaki said in a statement.

Biden arrived at Walter Reed Medical Center Friday morning for a routine annual physical, his first physical in office as the oldest president in his first term in US history.

It is a routine process for a vice president to assume presidential powers while the president undergoes a medical procedure that requires anesthesia. Then-Vice President Dick Cheney did it multiple times when then-President George W. Bush underwent routine colonoscopies.

Earlier this year, former President Donald Trump’s former Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham heavily hinted that Biden’s predecessor underwent a colonoscopy on a secret visit to Walter Reed in 2019, but kept it quiet to avoid transferring. the presidential power to then Vice President Mike Pence.

In his book “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” Grisham doesn’t use the term colonoscopy, but he strongly hints that that’s what the trip was for. She said Trump’s hospital visit, which for weeks sparked speculation about his health, was a “very common procedure,” during which “a patient is sedated.”

He also wrote that Bush had a similar procedure while in office. Grisham wrote that Trump did not want then-Vice President Mike Pence to be in power while he was sedated, which was part of the reason he kept his visit private. Nor did he “want to be the butt of a joke” on late-night talk shows, Grisham writes.