Biden does speak more haltingly, while Trump spews words easily and everywhere | Opinion

If Joe Biden is elderly — he’s 81, in case you hadn’t heard — then I guess those White House reporters screaming demeaning non-questions about his age and acuity at his Thursday press conference are guilty of elder abuse.

Watching the pack howl, “They say you are too old!” and “Why does it have to be you?” was painful, though I was more embarrassed by their performative hectoring, which I don’t know that I’ve ever seen lead to any true accountability, than by his long pauses while they shrieked.

As I might have mentioned before, I’d rather have a president who believes in democratic norms but says “Mexico” when he means “Egypt” than one who calls Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán the leader of Turkey but also does not believe in old-timey traditions like conceding a clear electoral loss. Or refraining from egging on a mob shouting that they want to hang your own vice president.

Whether out of decrepitude, delusion or dishonesty, Donald Trump, a pup of 77, has for years said things at least as baffling as Biden did when he called French President Emmanuel Macron by the name of his long-ago predecessor, François Mitterrand.

For instance, that time in 2019 when Trump said the Continental Army “manned the air” and “took over the airports” during the Revolutionary War. Because nothing has ever been his fault, he blamed the teleprompter that he’d sworn he’d never use for something that was never on it.

Recently, Trump accused Nikki Haley of failing to secure the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Obviously, he meant to instead falsely hold then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi responsible. Just as Biden meant to reference former German Chancellor Angela Merkel when he instead mentioned the late Helmut Kohl. And just as Trump meant to say hey to Sioux City when he instead greeted Sioux Falls.

I wouldn’t want either presidential contender on my team in Charades, OK? But not all flubs are equally problematic.

Can ‘true stable genius’ tell truth from fiction?

On Thursday, Trump told reporters that Pelosi was to blame for the insurrection that he planned and provoked, and that his lawyers had just told the Supreme Court never happened at all.

This was not an oopsie, but either another lie or, because by this point he might have conned himself, the ravings of someone who can no longer tell the difference between the truth and even the most unconvincing imposter.

There is an important difference between getting a name or place wrong, which both men have done, and the fountain of toxic nonsense that Trump sprays.

The New York judge overseeing a civil trial against Trump found that for decades, he committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets. Does the self-declared “true stable genius,” who has declared bankruptcy six times, even know his net worth? Can he tell PR from reality, and how would we know?

After a lifetime of being rewarded for the flamboyant and the fictional, is he still capable of reining in the kind of defamatory commentary about E. Jean Carroll that is going to cost him $83 million?

And is even the crowd that insists politicians are “all bad” — they’re not, and I’ve noticed that only Trump supporters make this claim — sure that someone with the self-control of a kid on a sugar high should get the nuclear codes to play with again?

No one can pretend that Biden is as hale today as when Trump mocked him for falling off his bike two years ago. Though the economy is by almost every marker better today than under his predecessor, Biden does move more slowly and speak more haltingly now. While Trump, though he often makes no sense, spews words easily and everywhere.

The ancient advice, usually attributed to the French actress Catherine Deneuve, that beyond a certain age, a woman has to choose between her face and her derrière, also applies to older gentlemen. And there, too, the presidential rivals part company, with Biden’s low BMI reading as frailty and Trump, who let’s just say has not chosen his rump, looking not just more solid but younger.

Gratuitous special counsel ‘elderly man’ comment

To distract from the substance of special counsel Robert K. Hur’s 388-page report, which found that Joe Biden’s handling of official documents was not criminal, and also was nothing like Trump’s, the former Trump official that Merrick Garland had appointed to investigate Biden couldn’t resist the urge to comment gratuitously that Biden was a “well-meaning elderly man” so forgetful he couldn’t recall his son Beau’s death.

Naturally, this hey-look-over-there ploy worked, in part by making Biden angry almost beyond speech.

It also encouraged those Democrats who are never satisfied to again ponder replacing the president on the November ballot. (Remember four years ago, when they wanted to trade dull Joe for exciting Andrew Cuomo?)

Never-dissatisfied Republicans, meanwhile, continue to set their bar so low that variations on “well I never expected Trump to be Jesus” still get nods all around.

Senior moments have been an issue in other campaigns, of course. Ronald Reagan, who once greeted the Liberian leader Samuel Doe as ‘Chairman Moe,’ minimized concern about his age during his 1984 run against Walter Mondale by joking that “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Age remains the principal issue dogging Biden because no other accusations have stuck. White House reporters had no time to yell at Trump about his lapses, because there was so much corruption to shout about instead.