Former President Donald Trump said during an exclusive interview with Daily Caller editorial director Vince Coglianese he does not expect President Joe Biden to make it to the 2024 general election.
Biden’s cognitive abilities have come into question over multiple incidents throughout his presidency and most recently from a report by Special Counsel Robert Hur, who said Biden appeared to forget when his vice presidency began and ended and when his son Beau died. This has raised major concerns among voters, many of whom have called for Biden to back away from serving a second term.
“I think he’s in bad shape,” Trump said. “I think he’s cognitively impaired, and he’s certainly physically impaired. He can’t walk off a stage. He can’t walk up a flight of stairs, you know, three stairs. And he can never find his way. He can never find the stairs. He can’t put two sentences together, and he’s responsible for negotiating with Putin on nuclear weapons, right? You know, the whole thing is crazy. No, personally I don’t think he’s going to make it. I may be wrong. A lot of people think that I’m absolutely wrong. I guess the odds are like 50/50.”
Trump, who is currently 77 years old, assured Biden’s alleged cognitive impairment is not due to his age, adding he knows people older than the president who are completely sharp. (RELATED: ‘The Question Really Answers Itself!’: NYT Poll On Biden’s Age Sends Scarborough Into Tailspin)
“I don’t think he’s the picture of health. It’s not because of his age,” the former president continued. “I know people in their 80’s and 90’s that are 100%. They’re as good as they were 25 years before. And you know that, they like to say the age. It’s not because of the age, you know, there’s like a four-year difference between us, but I think they do the age to take shots at me if you want to know the truth … there’s something going on, in my opinion.”
The American public, including Democrats, have repeatedly expressed concern about the 81-year-old president’s age.
A New York Times/Sienna College poll released Saturday found that 73% of voters believe Biden is “too old to be an effective president,” while 42% said the same about Trump.
A Yahoo/YouGov poll from March 2023 found that 48% of Democrats believe Biden’s age is an issue for reelection, and a New York Times/Siena College poll from July 2022 found that nearly two-thirds of Democrats preferred a different candidate to be the nominee in the 2024 election. A poll released in Sept. 2023 by the Wall Street Journal found that a vast majority of Americans, 73%, believe Biden is “too old” to serve as Commander-in-Chief for another term.
Several Democrats have called for a “new generation of leadership” to take over after the 2024 election. CNN’s David Axelrod suggested in November that Biden needed to consider whether it was “wise” for him to remain in the race, and Democratic Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, who is now challenging Biden in the primary, said Biden should not run in 2024, calling for a “generational change.”
Biden brushed off concerns about his age and cognitive ability during an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” by targeting Trump and praising his own policy record as a reason why he should serve a second term
“Well, a couple things. Number one, you gotta take a look at the other guy. He is about as old as I am, but he can’t even remember his wife’s name,” Biden said. “Number two, it is about how old your ideas are. Look, this is a guy who wants to take us back. He wants to take us back in Roe v. Wade. He wants to take us back on a whole range of issues that are 50, 60 years. That have been solid American positions. And I really mean this sincerely. I think it is about the future and every single thing we’ve done. We’ve got some good things done.”
The president has had many gaffes and mishaps, including when he searched for a Republican congresswoman in Sept. 2022 who had previously died in a car crash in Aug. 2022. Biden has also fallen while climbing up stairs and onstage. Hur’s report said Biden presented himself as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” stating a jury might not convict him, since being guilty of a crime “requires a mental state of willfulness.”