Vast Majority of Americans View Biden as Too Old To Serve, New Poll Finds After Special Counsel’s Damning Report 

86 percent of Americans say the president is too old to serve, according to a new poll from ABC News and Ipsos.

AP/file
The likely 2024 contenders: Presidents Trump and Biden. AP/file

The vast majority of Americans view President Biden as too old to serve a second term, according to new polling. The disastrous numbers for the White House come immediately after a rough week for the president as he tries to convince Americans that he is capable of doing the job. 

The new poll, conducted by ABC News and Ipsos, shows that 86 percent of Americans view Mr. Biden as being too old to serve a second term. That number includes 59 percent of Americans who view both Mr. Biden and President Trump as being too old, and the 27 percent who view just Mr. Biden as being too old. Only 3 percent of poll respondents say only Mr. Trump — and not Mr. Biden — is too old for the job. 

The percentage of Americans who think Mr. Biden is too old has been steadily growing since the spring. Just in September, the ABC poll found that 74 percent of Americans believed Mr. Biden was too old, and in May that number was 68 percent. 

The latest poll was conducted on Friday and Saturday — just hours after Special Counsel Robert Hur released his damning report that described Mr. Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and as someone incapable of remembering important dates and events. 

Shortly after the report was released, Mr. Biden held a press conference at the White House to condemn Mr. Hur. “I was in the middle of handling an international crisis,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Hur’s assertion that he was forgetful during their interview in October, which occurred just hours after Hamas attacked Israel. “I just believed that’s what I owed the American people so they could know no charges would be brought and the matter closed.” 

During the presser, Mr. Biden mixed up the leaders of Egypt and Mexico.

Earlier in the day, the president had reportedly lashed out about Mr. Hur — who claims the president forgot when his son, Beau, died — to Democratic lawmakers. “You think I would f—— forget the day my son died?” the president asked, according to the Associated Press.

The report was released the same week that Mr. Biden confused the French president, Emmanuel Macron, with his long-dead predecessor, François Mitterrand, and claimed that he had recently spoken with a German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who left office in 1998 and died in 2017. 

On Sunday, the White House deployed some of its top emissaries to the network and cable news talk shows to defend the president.  

On NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” the co-chairman of Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, Mitch Landrieu, criticized the host for comparing Mr. Biden’s mishandling of classified information with that of Mr. Trump, who was criminally charged for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. 

“Let’s just keep the facts right and let’s not make false comparisons,” Mr. Landrieu said to Kristen Welker. 

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” a former White House counsel who is now a private attorney for the president, Bob Bauer, said Mr. Hur’s report “went off the rails” and described it as “a shabby work product.” When asked if the president has memory problems, Mr. Bauer said, “He does not,” and noted that he sat with Mr. Biden during the interview with the special counsel’s office. 

The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, also spoke with Ms. Welker about the report, saying it was “gratuitous” in its criticisms of Mr. Biden’s age and mental acuity. “The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing, detail-oriented, and focused,” Mr. Mayorkas said.


The New York Sun

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