©Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden leaves the White House in Washington, U.S., February 9, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
By Tim Reid
(Reuters) – The mental ability and age of U.S. presidential candidates took center stage on the campaign trail on Saturday, following a report that President Joe Biden was suffering from memory lapses.
Former President Donald Trump has accused both Biden, the Democrat he will likely face in November’s general election, and Nikki Haley, Trump’s last remaining rival for the Republican presidential nomination, of lacking the mental capacity to become president.
Haley – like Trump, campaigning in South Carolina, where the two will meet in the primary election on February 24 – attacked both men, calling Trump mentally deficient and saying Biden is too old to be president.
Meanwhile, the Biden White House, responding to Thursday’s report from a Justice Department special counsel that Biden had a poor memory, continued its full-scale attack on Trump’s age and mental acuity after Trump recently mixed up names and made other words. gaffe.
“Every time Donald Trump opens his mouth, he is confused, deranged, lying or worse,” TJ Ducklo, Biden’s spokesman, said in a statement released by Biden’s reelection campaign.
The issue of mental competence has become a major theme of this year’s presidential campaign. Biden, 81, and Trump, 77, are respectively the two oldest men to have been elected president. In recent days, Biden has confused the names of some world leaders.
The issue is vexing for Biden’s reelection campaign. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in September, 77% of respondents said they agreed with the statement that Biden was too old to work in government, while 56% said the same of Trump.
Haley, 52, has called for mental competency tests for presidential candidates over the age of 75.
The issue was brought to the forefront again after Special Counsel Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney in Maryland during the Trump administration, said in his report that he chose not to file criminal charges against Biden following a lengthy investigation 15 months on its handling of confidential documents. because the president cooperated.
Hur said it would be difficult to convict the incumbent Democratic president and described him as an “older, well-intentioned man with a poor memory” who was unable to recall to investigators when his son, Beau Biden, died.
Biden angrily denied Hur’s allegations about his memory, saying in a White House appearance Thursday night, “my memory is good.”
Trump, at a rally in Conway, South Carolina, said Hur’s report shows Biden is “unfit to serve as our commander in chief.”
Trump — who faces four state and federal criminal trials, including one for mishandling classified documents — is close to clinching the Republican nomination and the prospect of a likely general election rematch with Biden in November.
Haley, who has no clear path to the nomination after Trump’s back-to-back victories in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, refuses to drop out of the race, making a potential last stand in her home state of South Carolina, where she is trailing in opinion polls. Briscola.
On Saturday, Trump called his former ambassador to the United Nations “bird-brained” and “brain dead,” suggesting she lacked the mental capacity to enter the White House.
Haley, at the start of a two-week bus tour of South Carolina, called Biden “diminished.” She also cited a recent Trump speech in which she confused her with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“It’s bigger than just Joe Biden. Whether it’s Donald Trump confusing me with Nancy Pelosi … it’s time for a new generational leader,” Haley told reporters.