When Joe Biden launched his 2024 campaign for reelection, the New York Post scoffed, “Americans say… He’s already lost it”. The notion that the oldest president in US history is suffering from cognitive decline is well-entrenched. White House insiders say Biden frequently chirps, “I feel younger than my age”, but they have to admit he doesn’t look it. He has fallen off his bike, nodded off at summits, mangled his words and has been using a short, baby staircase on Air Force One after too many stumbles. He needs large-lettered cue cards to stay on message and repeats favourite stories inadvertently. That is just for starters. He will be 86 by the end of a second term in office.
Every gaffe and slip has been recycled on social media and Trump-friendly talk shows. The podcast star Joe Rogan has accused Biden of being “basically a shell” who “can’t talk right anymore”. The message has got through. A Washington Post/ABC News poll on January 14 showed that only 28 per cent of respondents thought Biden, 81, had the “mental sharpness” to be an effective president, a diagnosis that explains why his approval ratings remain stubbornly in the doldrums. In contrast 47 per cent thought Donald Trump had the mental acuity to serve. Figuratively, Trump may be mad as a box of frogs with a maniacal energy that powers his campaign, but he has not been regarded as doddery or borderline senile. Until now.
Let the battle of the geriatrics begin! Nothing enrages Trump, 77, more than mockery and laughter, much as he loves dishing it out. And Trump, undeniably, has made a series of flubs. First he muddled up Biden with Barack Obama no less than seven times at various events last autumn, called the Hungarian premier Victor Orban the leader of Turkey, claimed Kim Jong-un of North Korea led a country of 1.4 billion people (did he mean the Chinese president, Xi Jinping?) and appeared to confuse Jeb Bush, the ex-Florida governor, with his brother, former president George W Bush.
Nothing will undo perceptions that Biden is too old for a second term, but his team hope to neutralise the damage
Then, in New Hampshire on January 19, Trump fuelled speculation about his mental powers by talking gibberish about Nikki Haley, his last-remaining rival for the Republican presidential nomination. He repeatedly blamed her for the chaos at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when she was nowhere near the riot. “Nikki Haley was in charge of security,” Trump affirmed at a rally. “We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guard, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that.” He meant Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, who was not in charge of security either, by the way.
Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and ex-US ambassador to the United Nations, has jumped on alleged signs of Trump’s impending dotage as justification for staying in the Republican race. She is bleeding voters and donors and is likely to lose heavily to Trump in the South Carolina primary, her home state, on February 24. But on Tuesday she came out swinging on CBS television in the hope that her opponent may finally prove unfit for office. “Are we really in this country going to have two 80-year-olds running for president?” she asked. “It is a fact that when you are their age, you have mental decline. I don’t care who you are, you have mental decline.” Taking a direct shot at Trump, she added, “He is not what he was in 2016 [when he ran for president]. He has declined.”
Haley’s trash talk about America’s greatest president, as the Make America Great Again (Maga) crowd regard their hero, will not do her any favours for now. The fact that the Biden camp has been gleefully recycling her criticism of Trump on social media, with the tagline, “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message,” is only adding to Trumpist perceptions that she is an establishment Rino (Republican in Name Only). But she knows, as does Biden, that a series of events are conspiring to enrage Trump. And the madder he gets, the more unhinged he sounds.
Take the case for defamation against E Jean Carroll. Last week, Trump was ordered by a New York jury to pay $83.3 million damages to the former Elle agony aunt for calling her a “whack job”, a “liar” and a “fraud” in defiance of an earlier $5 million court judgement for sexually assaulting her and defaming her character. Trump didn’t help his cause by posting 37 ranting messages about her on Truth Social, his social media platform, in a midnight meltdown before the verdict. He also stormed out of court shortly before the jury retired. Playing to the political gallery rather than the jurors cost him dearly.
Trump’s admirers — and there are plenty — will continue to insist he is the victim of a “witch hunt”, but the coils of the law are tightening against him. Haley has said pointedly “I absolutely trust the jury” in Carrol’s case. The cycle of Trump trials, for alleged election interference, hiding classified documents and paying hush money to a porn star, is only just getting started. And at any moment now, Judge Arthur Engeron is set to deliver his verdict in the civil case brought by the New York state attorney general Letitia James against Trump for business fraud. He could be fined up to $370 million for inflating the value of his properties and forbidden from trading in New York, the very place where he made his name and fortune. If you think Trump has already lost his rag, just wait.
Nothing will undo perceptions that Biden is too old for a second White House term, but his team can at least seek to neutralise the damage by claiming Trump is as bad, if not worse. While everybody knows the wilting Biden relies heavily on his close-knit team of advisers to run the country, Trump is a one-man chaos agent who has alienated all the previous “grown-ups” who served him and is hellbent on taking control of the levers of government for himself. As his former White House chief-of-staff, John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, told the Washington Post, “The lesson the former president learned from his first term is don’t put guys like me… in those jobs. The lesson he learned was to find sycophants.” Trump in full revenge mode is an unnerving thought (though not to his fans who think it will help him “drain the swamp”).
Biden’s age and apparent frailty have damaged his standing among young voters, who have not forgotten being locked up during the Covid years. A poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics last month found that only 35 per cent of 18 to 29 year-old Americans approved of Biden. But they like Trump even less, so the Democrats badly need them to turn up to vote. Hence, the current frenzy over Taylor Swift’s romance with Travis Kelce, the Kansas Chief American football star. The Biden camp is hoping to get a slice of the singer’s 279 million Instagram followers to the polls — and is plotting for Biden to join her at one of her Eras concerts — while Maga conspiracy theorists are furiously claiming their relationship is a fake Democratic “psyops” election-rigging ploy.
Are they nuts? You bet. The problem for Biden is that Trump’s derangement is on brand. His fans expect him to sound and act as crazy, whereas the most Democrats can hope for is that Biden has a pulse. It is not a fair fight.
