9 months ago
President Joe Biden needs to do more to reassure Americans concerned about his age and acuity, The New York Times editorial board argued Friday.
The editorial published online warned that the president is “hiding, or worse, being hidden” from the American people — and the Trump campaign is taking advantage of the opportunity to attack the president.
The editorial board wrote that Biden had “less substantive, unscripted interaction with the public and the press than any other president in recent memory.”
The Biden administration’s strategy to connect with Americans has relied on social media influencers rather than public exposures where voters may challenge him, the piece argued. This, along with Biden’s age, has flooded the public with doubt, the editorial board stated.
At 81, the Democratic incumbent is the oldest person to serve as president and to run for reelection. The editorial further pointed out that more than 70 percent of swing state voters agreed that Biden is “just too old to be an effective president,” according to a Times/Siena poll conducted in November.
Biden faced renewed criticism following a contentious news conference broadcast from the White House on Thursday night that was supposed to mitigate concerns about his acuity following the special counsel’s report into classified documents stored at his home.
“His assurances, in other words, didn’t work,” the editorial said of Biden’s news conference. “He must do better — the stakes in this presidential election are too high for Mr. Biden to hope that he can skate through a campaign with the help of teleprompters and aides and somehow defeat as manifestly unfit an opponent as Donald Trump, who has a very real chance of retaking the White House.”
English (US)