Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated that President Joe Biden’s age is a “legitimate issue” on the campaign trail, as he pursues a second term in the White House in the next election.
Speculation over Biden’s cognitive abilities resurfaced this week when the 81-year-old mistook the leaders of Egypt and Mexico, just after refuting rumors that his mental health is deteriorating.
The language gaffe came after it was announced that Biden will not face criminal charges for mishandling confidential government information after a prosecutor portrayed him as a “elderly man with a poor memory.”
According to Clinton, who campaigned unsuccessfully against Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election, the discussion over Biden’s age is fair.
“I talked to people in the White House all the time, and you know, they know it’s an issue, but as I like to say, ‘look, it’s a legitimate issue,'” Clinton said in an interview with MSNBC last week. “It’s a genuine concern for Trump, who is only three years younger, correct? So that is an issue.”
Instead of ignoring worries about his age, Clinton suggested that the Biden campaign staff focus on his legislative experience ahead of the November election.
“I think Biden also should lean into the fact that he’s experienced and that experience is not just in the political arena,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked. “It’s like, the stuff of, you know, human experience, character, wisdom.”
According to an NBC News survey released last week, around 76% of respondents were concerned about Biden’s age and health if he were reelected to another four-year term. 61% of respondents expressed similar reservations about Trump, who would be 78 years old when the election takes place in November.
In October, the Republican frontrunner sparked questions of his own mental acuity when he incorrectly referred to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as the leader of Türkiye.
Meanwhile, Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, on Sunday described special counsel Robert Hur’s description of the US president’s mental wellbeing as a “shabby work product.” The Republican-led critique of Biden was “misleading,” Bauer told CBS, adding that the report into his retention of classified documents “went off the rails.”
According to a YouGov poll of 1,000 US citizens earlier this month, Trump holds a one-point advantage over Biden in a hypothetical match-up between the two likely presidential candidates.
