Trump Just Threw The Best Argument Against Biden in the Trash

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Donald Trump is the prohibitive favorite to be the GOP nominee for president next year, where he will in all likelihood again square off against President Joe Biden.

Given the loss he suffered at Biden’s hands in the last election, one might have expected him to be preparing every arrow in his quiver that could possibly be used against his opponent.

Instead, Trump has just thrown one of his sharpest bolts into the garbage.

“A poll just came out showing that almost everyone thinks Crooked Joe Biden is too old, but they don’t think I’m too old (and I’m not!),” announced Trump on Truth Social Thursday. “Actually, Crooked Joe is not too old, he’s too incompetent, and the WORST PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The Donald doth protest too much, methinks.

The 77-year-old Trump’s concern with making the 80-year-old Biden’s age is no mystery. Trump himself would turn 80 halfway through his second term, and while he’s had considerably fewer senior moments in front of the camera than Biden to date, another year of campaigning while also fighting various legal battles could take a considerable toll on him.

Trump’s well-founded worry that voters may be skeptical of a geriatric stone-thrower in a glass nursing home — even one as well-appointed as Mar-a-Lago — should make Republican voters think twice about whether nominating Trump is worth wasting such a valuable attack against Biden.

An Associated Press-NORC poll conducted last month found that 77% of Americans, 74% of independents, and even 69% of Democrats believed Biden was too old to serve another term in office.

Those should be sobering numbers for the president and his political team, but there’s more than few spoons full of sugar to help the medicine go down.

A slim majority (51%) of Americans — and 48% of independents —  also think Trump’s too old to serve another term, blunting the impact of dissatisfaction Biden’s advanced age.

And besides carrying the same liability that Biden does, Trump is campaigning with several more anchors tied around his ankles.

According to the AP poll, significant majorities of the country believe Trump has done something either illegal or at the very least unethical in the case of each of the four criminal indictments leveled against him this year. In two of the cases, majorities believe Trump has committed crimes.

Fifty-four percent of the public also believes that Trump’s actions in the wake of the 2020 presidential election were a threat to democracy, while just 20 viewed them as a defense of democracy. That’s not great news for a candidate whose every other utterance serves as a reminder of those actions — and the electoral failure that preceded them.

Worse yet for Trump, the poll found that the cumulative effect of these findings would be Biden once again prevailing over him. Forty-five percent indicated that they would definitely or probably back the incumbent, while just 36% said the same about the prospective challenger.

As is so often the case, Trump’s diatribes say as much about his own insecurities as they do about their targets. If nominating Trump means forfeiting one of their most potent critiques of Biden, Republicans won’t be able to say they weren’t warned.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.