President Joe Biden is not doing much to help counter the perception he does not have the cognitive abilities for the job.
During remarks on Friday about the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Biden took a shot at former President Donald Trump for claiming he told a world leader he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” if NATO members didn’t pay their dues.
He then stopped speaking for roughly 10 seconds as he seemed to be trying to find words to say.
“I guess I should clear my mind here a little bit and not say what I’m really thinking,” Biden added.
Watch the video below:
Perhaps you could say he was just trying to formulate his attack. But he started it. He seems to have had some idea of where he wanted to go with the thought… and then he just didn’t.
So there are a couple of options: the first is that he was going to lash out and show to the public he’s really not Mr. Nice Guy. The other option is he forgot what he was going to say about Trump. And the third option is he was hoping an attack would materialize while he spoke, and then it just didn’t.
But the moment raised eyebrows on X as users pointed to already existing concerns about his age:
There's a giant teleprompter right in front of him and it's still a trainwreck https://t.co/WEFQqs56gI
— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) February 16, 2024
This is full-blown dementia. It's as sad as it is terrifying. https://t.co/PWhRg8MYtE
— Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) February 16, 2024
Turn him off and turn him on again. See if that works. https://t.co/Xg7EzVfeRL
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 16, 2024
This incident came a day after a Monmouth University poll found 32% of voters say Biden has the stamina for the job.
Only 2% of Republicans and 20% of independents say the same, while 72% of Democrats agree.
And after Special Counsel Robert Hur declined to charge the president for his handling of classified, but offered several shocking claims in his report about the president’s memory, including that he did not remember “even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
The Democrats are desperately trying to paint Hur as a hardcore “Trumper” sleeper agent who used his report to hurt Biden by attacking his memory.
But the president has done plenty on his own to hurt his image. You could pick pretty much any day or time he makes a public appearance and find some cringe worthy moment, or moment when it looks like he’s lost in the woods desperately trying to find a hiking trail before it gets dark and he gets eaten by a bear, or when it looks like he navigated a minefield hoping he doesn’t fall off the stage.
Just watch him, as Biden likes to challenge Americans to do, it’s not hard to see why people are concerned about his age.