President Joe Biden, 81, faces the ultimate test of his mental fitness as he heads into tonight’s 90-minute showdown in Atlanta against 78-year-old former President Donald Trump.
The president will stand on stage with only a notepad, a pencil and a bottle of water, without the aid of the teleprompter, and will not be allowed to talk to aides during commercial breaks.
Biden has spent the week at Camp David preparing for the debate with close aides, knowing the showdown in Atlanta could be a defining moment for his re-election bid.
Each campaign has highlighted the other candidate’s blunders and stumbles, but polls show Americans are more wary of Biden as an effective leader in a second term than Trump, and debate experts say the 81-year-old can’t afford to have a senior moment. .
While Trump has made verbal gaffes of late — this month, the White House was forced to respond to a trio of what press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called “cheap fakes” — viral videos appeared to show Biden wandering or freezing.
President Joe Biden waves before spending a week at Camp David, where he and aides are preparing for Thursday night’s debate in Atlanta — where he has only a notepad, a pencil and a bottle of water to get him through a 90-minute debate against the former president to guide Donald Trump
There was a video in Italy of Biden appearing to look the wrong way at an event with paratroopers – an image not helped by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni leading him back to pose for a photo.
In reality, Biden was in contact with paratroopers who had landed just out of frame.
In another video, during a Juneteenth celebration, Biden stares, smiles and watches the musical performance as other attendees danced.
Jean-Pierre returned in a press conference asking why that was a crime.
“The president was standing there listening to the music and he wasn’t dancing. “Excuse me, I didn’t know that dancing was not a mental problem, but a health problem,” she said at the June 17 briefing.
“That’s a weird thing to highlight, if you look at the people around him – if you look at the extended video of the people around him, they weren’t, they weren’t – there were a few people dancing too not,” she added.
President Joe Biden was accused of “freezing” at the end of his A-list fundraiser in Los Angeles earlier this month, with former President Barack Obama escorting him off the stage
The debate venue was nearly ready Wednesday at CNN headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, ahead of the first general election debate of the 2024 cycle, which will pit President Joe Biden against former President Donald Trump
A third “cheap fake” occurred when Biden appeared to pause before leaving the stage at his A-list fundraiser in Los Angeles with George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jimmy Kimmel and former President Barack Obama.
The much younger Obama escorted Biden, his former vice president, from the stage.
Before the era of cheap knockoffs, Biden fell off his bicycle in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and tripped up the steps of Air Force One several times.
He now usually boards the larger Air Force One and takes the shorter flight of stairs.
Biden also tripped over a sandbag during a commencement in Colorado last summer.
The Biden campaign has responded by highlighting the moments when Trump, just 3.5 years younger, has seemingly shown his age.
“Here’s a montage of Donald Trump getting confused, lost, wandering off and not waving to anyone,” an X-post from the @BidenHQ account said last week.
President Joe Biden’s campaign on Thursday shared a video of former President Donald Trump “becoming confused” after a trio of viral videos showed Biden “freezing” and wandering off
President Donald Trump’s fitness was called into question in June 2020 when he tiptoed down a ramp at West Point – a mini-scandal dubbed ‘ramp-gate’
The campaign then shared a 2.5-minute video with clips of Trump, from during his presidency, leaving events before he was supposed to, or standing awkwardly in place when he was supposed to leave.
The battle over who is best suited to become president began four years earlier.
During the 2020 campaign cycle, video of Trump tiptoeing down a ramp during an appearance at West Point in June went viral.
That led to similar questions about Trump’s fitness, with him having to deny that he had Parkinson’s disease.
“I stayed there for hours. And what am I supposed to do? I’m getting publicity for going down a slope,” said An stunned Trump told The Wall Street Journal. ‘And does he have Parkinson’s? I do not think so.’
In an initial tweet about the incident — which was dubbed “ramp-gate” — Trump described the ramp as “very long and steep,” adding that it “had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery.”