Ex-president’s verbal slips could weaken his attacks on Biden’s age
One of Donald Trump’s new comedic bits at his rallies features him impersonating the current commander in chief with an over-the-top caricature mocking President Biden’s age.
With droopy eyelids and mouth agape, Trump stammers and mumbles. He squints. His arms flap. He shuffles his feet and wanders laggardly across the stage. A burst of laughter and applause erupts from the crowd as he feigns confusion by turning and pointing to invisible supporters, as if he does not realize his back is to them.
But his recent campaign events have also featured less deliberate stumbles. Trump has had a string of unforced gaffes, garble, and general disjointedness that go beyond his usual discursive nature, and that his Republican rivals are pointing to as signs of his declining performance.
On Sunday in Sioux City, Iowa, Trump wrongfully thanked supporters of Sioux Falls, a South Dakota town about 75 miles away, correcting himself only after being pulled aside onstage and informed of the error.
It was strikingly similar to a fictional scene that Trump acted out earlier this month, pretending to be Biden mistaking Iowa for Idaho and needing an aide to straighten him out.
In recent weeks, Trump has also told supporters not to vote, and claimed to have defeated President Barack Obama in an election. He has praised the collective intellect of an Iranianbacked militant group that has long been an enemy of both Israel and the United States, and repeatedly mispronounced the name of the armed group that rules the Gaza Strip.
“This is a different Donald Trump than 2015 and ’16 — lost the zip on his fastball,” Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida told reporters last week while campaigning in New Hampshire.
It is unclear whether Trump’s recent slips are connected to his age. He has long relied on an unorthodox speaking style that has served as one of his chief political assets, establishing him, improbably, among the most effective communicators in American politics. But as the 2024 race for the White House heats up, Trump’s increased verbal blunders threaten to undermine one of Republicans’ most potent avenues of attack, and the entire point of his onstage pantomime: the argument that Biden is too old to be president.
Biden, a grandfather of seven, is 80. Trump, who has 10 grandchildren, is 77.
Even though only a few years separate the two men in their golden years, voters view their vigor differently. Recent polls have found that roughly 2 out of 3 voters say Biden is too old to serve another four-year term, while only about half say the same about Trump. If that gap starts to narrow, it’s Trump who has far more to lose in a general election matchup.
According to an August survey from the Associated PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 43 percent of US voters said Biden and Trump were “too old to effectively serve another four-year term as president.” Among those voters, 61 percent said they planned to vote for Biden, compared with 13 percent who said the same about Trump.