How is Biden doing? Doubts about age (and the president’s reassurances)

FROM OUR REPORTER
BARI – A video in which the G7 leaders together observe the paratroopers performance of the Folgore Brigade and Biden steps away for a moment, recalled by Giorgia Meloni who touches his arm it went viral. Some describe it as a moment of “distraction” and “wandering,” but in reality he turned for a moment to compliment one of the paratroopers.

Doubts about the age of the president, a man eighty-one years old subjected to grueling rhythms between international commitments and of election campaign, are not new to Americans. Even in a rare interview given by Biden to the magazine Time last month, the author notes, following the president into the Oval Office, that “his stiff gaitthe muffled voicethe irregular syntax they clash with the appearance intense and talkative when he was a senator or vice president.” The Trump campaign is banking heavily on this: a video showing what President Biden looks like trying to sit on a chair that isn’t there during the anniversary of the Normandy landings it also went viral; but it was a partial and therefore distorted film, as noted byAssociated Press, because in the complete one the American president looks back, sees the chair and slowly sits down after a pause. In other moments, as in the Juneteenth ceremony a few days ago at the White House, Biden smiles but is still and a little out of place, while everyone around him dances.

Also the 77 year old Trump he faced age doubts and the media defines his “rambling” speeches. The media has often reported Biden’s slips (such as when he said that he had been vice president during the pandemic or remembered having known at the G7 in 2021 Helmut Kohlwho died in 2017 and Francois Mitterrandwho died in 1996), but also those of Trump (That he confused for example the former speaker Nancy Pelosi with former rival for the nomination Nikki Haley).

In an article published by Wall Street Journal in recent days, Republican parliamentarians under anonymity told anecdotes about the «slowness» and «sagging» of the eighty-one-year-old American president in closed-door meetings in which topics such as funds for Ukraine and the debt ceiling were discussed. In one of these meetings, in January, the American president – the authors wrote – had «a voice Like this dim that some had difficulty hearing it, he took long breaks And he closed his eyes for so long who wondered if he was still tuned in.” A Biden spokesman, Andrew Bates, called the Republicans’ comments “politically motivated” and said that foreign leaders, experts and Republicans in Congress themselves recognized that Biden is “an experienced leader” and, if he happens to repeatedly tell the same story, he always did it, well before he was eighty-one.

The White House repeats that in the annual visit in February, the doctor concluded that Biden has the skills to serve as president. But in a long service of the New York Times a few months ago, one of the neurologists interviewed claimed that a full tank would be useful neuropsychological examination. A quarter of the voters Americans, in a new survey by CBS states that neither Biden nor Trump are in the mental and cognitive condition to serve as presidents. Only a third of voters think Biden has cognitive skills, while half of voters think Trump does not. “Trump is doing better than Biden, even if neither of them inspires great confidence,” he observes CBS. Voters’ political ideology plays a role in these assessmentsbut there are more Democrats (one in three) who fear that Biden does not have the necessary cognitive skills (even if ultimately they say they will vote for him anyway against Trump) than Republicans who think the same thing about Trump. Among independents, there are a greater number of those who believe it is more of a problem for Biden.

When the president is asked if he will be able to sustain a new four-year term, he responds proudly: «Watch me», stay and watch me. In February, when Special Prosecutor Robert K. Hur concluded that he is “a elderly with good intentions and a poor memory,” Biden replied: “I know what the hell I’m doing».