“WEAK AND FRAIL”
Biden’s team, meantime, is not unhappy at being able, for once, to turn the spotlight on another ageing candidate – especially as the current president is turning 81 on Monday (Nov 20).
But the Trump camp has not taken such slights lightly.
“The Biden campaign must be confused like their own candidate because Biden is in a constant state of confusion,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told AFP.
In an unusually blunt and biting statement, Cheung went on to mock Biden as “weak and frail”, prone to fall and even “just plain stupid”.
Trump, during his campaign rallies, generally appears vigorous, interacting sometimes for hours with a sea of supporters.
But critics ask whether his repeated gaffes and the videos of him gripping a railing on a ramp to keep from falling, or trembling as he holds a glass of water, are reflections simply of fatigue – or signs of physical or mental decline.
From the outside, it is impossible to say.
While the two men are not far apart in age, Biden likely comes across as older, said political scientist Kyle Kondik.
The polls tend to agree: Two-thirds of Americans believe the current president is too old to serve a second term, while only half of those surveyed say the same about the slightly younger Trump.
It remains to be seen how the two will hold up once the campaign is fully underway, said Kondik. Rightly or wrongly, he added, Trump’s verbal slips seem to be judged more leniently than Biden’s, simply because Trump has made so many of them.
Source: CNA
