US President Biden under fire over his mental fitness, claims that his Republican challenger Donald Trump also gets things wrong: such as his wife’s name.
“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,” he said while being interviewed on NBC’s Late Night show with Seth Meyers.
Biden, 81 years old, has been fighting a widespread and negative impression about his age and acuity, and that it makes him unfit to serve a second term as president. Three quarters of voters, half of them Democrats, share this concern but according to an NBC poll taken last month, less than half have similar concerns about Trump, 77.
It hasn’t helped that a Justice Department report on Biden’s handling of classified material referred to him as a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory”.
His campaign is hoping Biden’s record at the White House will encourage voters to overlook those deficits and focus on Trump’s record of 91 criminal charges. He also faces charges of fraud, sexual battery and defamation in New York courts.
“This is a guy who wants to take us back,” Biden said on the show, “He wants to take us back on Roe vs Wade. He wants to take us back on a whole range of issues that are 50, 60 years, they’ve been solid American positions.”
Trump has come under fire from Biden’s team over his claim that his legal issues will help him win the support of Black Americans.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, slammed him saying “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.”
Biden also criticised Trump for describing the Jan 6, 2021 “insurrectionists” who invaded Capitol Hill as “patriots”. “He thinks he can change the constitution and just ignore parts of the constitution. Here’s a guy who talks about retribution,” Biden said.
