Trump's Favorite Line of Attack on Biden May Have a Problem

One of former President Trump's favorite campaign themes is that 80-year-old President Biden is too old and prone to gaffes to win reelection. But a new theme in coverage of the 2024 election is that Trump, who's 77, is undercutting his argument by making quite a few public mistakes himself. Coverage:

• DeSantis' tracker: The campaign of Ron DeSantis has launched a "Trump Accident Tracker" to catalog the former president's slip-ups in speeches. The campaign put out this video compilation, which includes Trump mistakenly referring to the Obama administration instead of the Biden administration, misidentifying Hungary leader Viktor Orban, and mixing up Nikki Haley and Kristi Noem, as well as Jeb and George Bush. "This is a different Donald Trump than 2015 and '16—lost the zip on his fastball," DeSantis told reporters last week, per Axios. "It's sad to see."

• A mix-up: One mistake in wide circulation is from Sunday, when Trump spoke in Sioux City, Iowa, but addressed the crowd as being from Sioux Falls, per Newsweek. A state lawmaker appeared on stage to alert him to the mistake, as seen here. Critics point to the irony: Earlier this month, Trump did a mocking imitation of Biden mixing up Idaho and Iowa, which Biden hadn't actually done in real life (though he has made his share of gaffes, to be sure).
• At a cost? A number of analyses are wondering if Trump's mistakes will cost him. As one such piece in the New York Times notes, the former president's unconventional speaking style has made him one of "the most effective communicators in American politics." But "Trump's increased verbal blunders threaten to undermine one of Republicans' most potent avenues of attack, and the entire point of his onstage pantomime: the argument that Mr. Biden is too old to be president." Another at Vanity Fair echoes the point, suggesting the blunders "have undercut his most effective attack on the president: that he's too old."
• A distinction: Trump, perhaps all too aware that it's dangerous for a 77-year-old to call an 80-year-old too ancient, made a point last month to say that he's not focused on the number. "No, he's not too old at all," he told Megyn Kelly of Biden, per the Hill. "He's grossly incompetent."
• More to lose? For the record, polls suggest that 43% of Americans think both candidates are too old. The Times analysis, however, adds that the issue could hurt Trump more in the home stretch of the campaign, in part because it's already an established criticism of the current president, not so much of the former one. "The age issue is one that if Trump gets tarred with the same brush as Biden, it really hurts him," says pollster Berwood Yost.

(More Donald Trump 2024 stories.)