Republicans took aim at President Joe Biden’s mental acuity during his first news conference, mocking the 78-year-old commander in chief at times as they revived an attack from the 2020 campaign that never delivered the hoped-for punch with voters.
Biden was authoritative, fiery, and self-deprecating as he fielded a wide array of questions for more than an hour from behind the lectern in the East Room of the White House. The president blamed former President Donald Trump for the unfolding crisis at the Mexican border and much else, signaled growing support for eliminating the Senate filibuster over the objections of Republicans, and questioned whether the GOP would still exist in four years.
But it was Biden’s other moments that preoccupied Republicans as they assessed his performance.
The president occasionally reviewed notes for extended periods, sometimes appearing to deliver prepared answers to questions. And he sporadically fumbled his words, albeit that is not unusual. Even a sarcastic reference to his longevity in politics — “We should go back to the position on the filibuster that existed just when I came to the United States Senate 120 years ago,” he quipped — confirmed for Republicans their conviction that Biden has experienced cognitive decline.
“No wonder they kept him from doing this for so long,” tweeted Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman.
“Are you kidding me?” added Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, in a Twitter post. “Biden is flipping through a typed, multi-page document which I bet are [questions and answers.] I’ve never seen a [president] bring one of those to a news conference. Is he really that [weak] that he needs a study guide?”
Comments like this, which proliferated from conservatives during Biden’s Thursday news conference, hearken back to a central line of attack deployed by the Trump campaign during the 2020 presidential race.
The 45th president nicknamed Biden “Sleepy Joe” and claimed he was unprepared for the rigors of the White House. Trump accused Biden of deteriorating mentally compared to his earlier years as a Delaware senator and vice president, arguing he kept a light campaign schedule, not because of the health risks of the coronavirus but because he could not handle the physical and mental strain. The assertion became accepted dogma among grassroots Republicans.
The critique never took hold among voters writ large, at least not in the way that Trump’s branding of Hillary Clinton as “Crooked Hillary” did four years ago.
Some Republican strategists say the narrative captured the imagination of GOP voters nonetheless, partly in retaliation for how Democrats treated Trump during his term and partly because it supports their theory that the November election was stolen. Obviously, grassroots conservatives say as a matter of faith there is no other way to explain how a two-time failed candidate with Biden’s weaknesses could have defeated an incumbent as dynamic as Trump.
“That attack is the favorite of the Right because it somehow mirrors the attacks from the Left that Trump was dumb,” a Republican strategist in the Midwest said. “This is where we are in the Left/Right discourse these days. The far-right feels hurt that the Left would question Trump’s intelligence, and so, they want to hurt Biden and the far-left.”
Other Republican strategists say doubts about Biden’s mental capacity expressed by conservatives stem from objective observation.
In an interview, one Trumpworld political operative conceded that Republicans would be better off politically focusing on Biden’s legislative agenda and traditional missteps. For instance, the surge of thousands of unaccompanied minors at the southern border that the president precipitated with a change in policy from the Trump administration that sparked a grilling from reporters during his news conference.
“It would be better to make the argument that he is totally in control and knows the radicalism he’s pushing forward,” this Republican said. But after watching Biden’s sparring session with the press, this operative reached out with an admission. “It’s hard to argue with folks who say” the president “has slipped cognitively.”
