The president, the White House and his campaign have highlighted Trump’s right-wing views
President Joe Biden defended his mental fitness, pointing out his likely Republican challenger Donald Trump also gets things wrong.
During an appearance on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers broadcast early Tuesday, the president referred to reports Trump called his wife by a different name. It’s not clear if Trump was calling out to his wife or a former aide in the reported episode. Biden said what really matters is that the former president’s ideas are outdated.
“You got to take a look at the other guy. He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name, number one. Number two, it’s about how old your ideas are,” Biden said.
Biden, 81, has at times sought to parry questions about his age and mental acuity with humor. Yet he has struggled to allay Americans’ fears that he is unfit to serve four more years in the White House.
Three-quarters of voters, including half of Democrats, say they have concerns about Biden’s age, according to an NBC News poll taken in January. Less than half harbor similar concerns about Trump, 77.
Those worries were thrust to the forefront of the 2024 campaign earlier this month, when a Justice Department report on Biden’s handling of classified material referred to him as a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden compounded the issue when he mixed up world leaders during a news conference responding to the report.
Biden’s campaign is betting that voters will look past their age concerns when they compare the president to Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges and has already been found liable for fraud, sexual battery and defamation in New York courts.
The president, the White House and his campaign have highlighted Trump’s right-wing views and outlandish statements.
“This is a guy who wants to take us back. He wants to take us back on Roe v. Wade. He wants to take us back on a whole range of issues that are 50, 60 years – they’ve been solid American positions,” Biden said.
Trump recently claimed his legal problems help him with Black voters, in comments that likened his legal jeopardy to the history of anti-Black bias in the criminal-justice system.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday denounced those comments, calling them “repugnant and divisive,” saying that it is “profane to compare the long, painful history of abuse and discrimination suffered by Black Americans to something totally different for self-serving purposes.”
Trump has also compared himself to the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny. The former president, though, declined to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalny’s death. He also suggested he would let Russia invade NATO allies who have not met defense spending targets and mocked the military service of GOP rival Nikki Haley’s husband.
Biden also assailed Trump for describing “insurrectionists” arrested for joining the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol riot as “patriots” and for praising dictators.
“He thinks he can change the Constitution and just ignore parts of the Constitution. Here’s a guy who talks about retribution,” Biden said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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