Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre point-blank why President Joe Biden is treated “like a baby.”
A large percentage of voters, including Democrats, have cited Biden’s age as the reason they oppose his potential re-election in 2024. Biden will turn 81 on Nov. 20, continuing his record as the oldest president in U.S. history.
“President Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history. Why does White House staff treat him like a baby?” Doocy asked at the White House press briefing Tuesday.
“No one treats the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, like a baby,” the press secretary responded.
“So, there’s this book that says—” Doocy began.
“That’s ridiculous, it’s a ridiculous claim,” Jean-Pierre interjected.
Doocy cited a new book, The Last Politician by Atlantic writer Franklin Foe, which reads, “rather than owning his [Biden’s] failure, he fumed to friends how he was treated like a toddler. Was [former President] John Kennedy ever babied like that?”
“I’ll say this, there is always going to be a range of books that are about every administration, as you know, that’s going to have a variety of claims. That is not unusual, that happens all the time and we’re not going to litigate here. That’s not something that we are going to speak to,” Jean-Pierre said. (RELATED: Vast Majority Of Voters Think Biden Is ‘Too Old’ To Run For Reelection: POLL)
The press secretary said the White House staff read the excerpt from the book, and claimed it means Biden is not authoritarian. She then touted the administration’s policies focused on “rallying the world around Ukraine.”
Doocy then pressed her on a Wall Street Journal poll finding that two-thirds of Democrats believe the president is “too old” to serve a second term. The press secretary argued the president has “wisdom,” “experience,” and has taken “historic action” by passing bipartisan infrastructure legislation in 2022.
Polls have repeatedly shown that voters mainly cite age as the reason Biden should not run for re-election. A Yahoo/YouGov poll from March found two-thirds of Americans believe Biden is unfit to run due to this age. A recent poll conducted by The Associated Press and NORC found 69% of Democrats believe the president is too old to govern effectively.
Biden addressed concerns about his age during an April press conference, telling reporters that his legislative record has been “overwhelmingly positive.”
“With regard to age and polling data,” the president said, “I noticed the polling data. I keep hearing about it, is that I’m between 42 and 46% favorable rating, etc., but everybody running for reelection in this time has been in the same position, there’s nothing new about that. You’re making it sound like Biden’s really underwater,” he added. “Number two, when the same polling data asks whether what kind of job I’ve done, it gets overwhelmingly positive results.”