Rep. Matt Gaetz said that Joe Biden’s run for the White House ”looks less like a presidential campaign and more like elder abuse.”
The Florida Republican joined Fox News host Steve Hilton on Sunday evening and discussed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s repeated flubs on the campaign trail, including last week when Biden asked a reporter if he was a “junkie.” The reporter asked Biden if he has taken a cognitive test to show his mental acuity after claims from President Trump and others that he is suffering from a mental decline.
“That’s like saying you, before you got in this program, ‘Will you take a test, were you taking cocaine or not?’ What do you think, huh? Are you a junkie?'” Biden responded to the reporter.
Gaetz, a Trump ally, took issue with the response Sunday evening, before saying Biden’s political bid looks like “elder abuse.”
“First of all — OK, boomer. Nobody says ‘junkie’ anymore when someone suffers from, you know, substance abuse issues. We try to extend the hand of grace,” Gaetz said. “I would think Joe Biden might know that given his own family history. But Biden is substantively making the argument that there’s no factual predicate to question his mental capability, and in every American family, we see this dynamic where somebody loses contact, they become a little slower on the uptake, and it would be funnier if America weren’t facing such serious challenges.”
“We’ve got to beat this virus,” he continued. “We’ve got to confront China. We’ve got to get our economy moving again. Joe Biden’s effort in politics here looks less like a presidential campaign and more like elder abuse.”
Trump has repeatedly questioned Biden’s mental health, including last month, when he said, “Biden can’t put two sentences together.”
“They wheel him out. He goes up — he repeats — they ask him questions. He reads a teleprompter, and then he goes back into his basement,” Trump added. “You tell me the American people want to have that in an age where we’re in trouble with other nations that are looking to do numbers on us?”
Biden has said that he’s been “constantly tested” during the run, but his campaign clarified that he didn’t mean he was receiving actual cognitive tests.
“First of all, he’s been tested every single day that he’s been on the campaign trail. You know, he went through 12 debates in the Democratic primary. He defeated 25 other candidates to become the Democratic nominee,” his deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said.
