Media that speculated about Trump’s health will surely question Biden’s stumble on Air Force One

Five years ago, this incident would have been dismissed outright as a nonstory. But that was then. This is now. The press and the Biden campaign itself insisted last year these incidents raise legitimate, and even troubling, questions about a president’s overall fitness for office.

So, we’re going to have to speculate now about Biden’s health, right?

No, really — remember that particularly insipid episode, the one where newsrooms and Democratic operatives theorized that former President Donald Trump’s penchant for descending ramps and staircases slowly, deliberately, and sometimes with assistance was indicative of something far more serious?

“Trump’s Walk Down Ramp at West Point Raises Health Questions,” read the headline to a June 14, 2020, New York Times report authored by Maggie Haberman.

CNN did entire segments featuring on-air headlines such as “Trump’s mystery hand clutch.”

“Why the Donald Trump-West Point story actually matters,” read the headline to a CNN “analysis.”

The Washington Post even fact-checked Trump’s claim that a ramp he descended following an address at a West Point graduation ceremony had been “very slippery.” This defense, the newspaper declared, is “inconsistent with the weather, which on Saturday in West Point, N.Y., was sunny and clear-skied. The grass plain on which the commencement took place was dry.”

Speaking of questionable defenses, the White House said Friday that Biden tripped three times in a row because “it’s pretty windy outside,” as White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “It’s very windy. I almost fell coming up the steps myself.”

Uh huh.

The Washington Post has not yet fact-checked this claim.

As for Trump, then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden himself said during the election, “Look at how he steps, and look at how I step. Watch how I run up ramps and he stumbles down ramps. Come on.”

Biden for President even released a two-minute television ad in Oct. 2020 contrasting the supposed spry and quick-footed Democratic candidate with the supposed puttering Republican incumbent.

“Some people are always in a hurry,” the ad says over a montage of Biden walking, jogging, and even riding a bike.

The ad continues, interspersed with footage of Trump walking slowly down ramps and staircases, “When Joe Biden is president, America is just going to have to keep up.”

Surely, the same people who speculated about Trump’s health will ask similar questions and make similar insinuations about Biden following the Air Force One incident. Surely, these same people will likewise attempt to draw trend lines connecting Biden’s stumbling with his frequent verbal missteps, his forgetfulness, and the fact that his foot was in an orthopedic boot recently.

Or maybe not.