ABOVE: Nathan Gonzales, editor, and publisher of Inside Elections appeared on the Wednesday edition of CBN News’s Faith Nation to discuss whether President Joe Biden would seek reelection. Faith Nation is seen weeknights on the CBN News Channel.
President Joe Biden turns 80 next month, and he has been facing questions about his fitness to serve for a while. Now those questions are growing among members of his own party.
During an exclusive interview with CNN on Tuesday night, Biden responded to critiques about his age and the demands of the job.
“They’re concerned about whether or not I can get anything done, look what I’ve gotten done,” he told Jake Tapper. “Name me a president in recent history who’s gotten as much done as I have in the first two years, not a joke. You may not like what I got done, but the vast majority of the American people do like what I got done.”
His remarks come as polling shows a bipartisan majority of Republicans and Democrats think there should be an age cap on elected officials with most agreeing someone in their 80s is too old.
The latest Issue & Insights/TIPP Poll, taken from October 5-7, asked 1,376 adults across the country: “Some people are concerned about President Biden’s mental health. How concerned are you about President Biden’s mental health?”
The survey had a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
Almost two-thirds of all voters, 64%, said they had high concerns about Biden’s mental capacity, including 52% of Democrats. According to the poll, a majority of Democrats are now joining the rest of Americans questioning the president’s cognitive health.
In August, just 39% of Democrats were concerned. The number grew by 13 points in two months.
Biden whispers into the mic in the East Room of the White House as Vice President Harris stands by, June 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The 79-year-old’s misfires with continued gaffes include the awkward campaign event moment where he asked for a dead congresswoman. On Sept. 28, the president appeared at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health when he stood at a podium and asked for Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) who was tragically killed along with two members of her staff in a head-on collision with another vehicle.
“And I want to thank all of you here for including bipartisan elected officials, like representative government, Senator Braun, Senator Booker, Representative — Jackie, are you here?” Biden asked as he appeared to be looking around the room. “Where’s Jackie? I think she was — I think she was gonna be here to help make this a reality.”
President Biden seems to forget that Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) died in a car crash in August, seeking her out in the audience:
“Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? She must not be here.” pic.twitter.com/inzKDHrPK7
— The Recount (@therecount) September 28, 2022
At the same event, a video tribute was shown to the audience in Walorski’s honor. Plus, Biden had reportedly offered his condolences to her family after her death.
CBN News Chief Political Analyst David Brody commented about Biden’s “Where’s Jackie?” gaffe on Tuesday’s edition of CBN News’s Faith Nation when anchor John Jessup asked about the chance the president will run again in 2024.
“It was not just that, obviously, well, you know it’s not just that. But I mean it’s been going on for a long time. It’s kind of been the ‘ha-ha’ gaffe for a while when he was a senator now it’s like ‘Oh my gosh. You’re President of the United States and you’re the leader of the free world and you’re saying this,'” Brody said.
“And the other day, he said he had two words for everybody. ‘Made in America.’ I mean it’s not funny anymore. It just isn’t funny. And Democrats are understanding this,” he noted. “And so look, I think ultimately what does this mean? It means there’s not going to be a Joe Biden running for president in 2024. I can’t imagine that. But beyond me, just whether I can imagine it or not, there’s talk within the White House about how we’re going to get out of this, if you will.”
“How are we going to kind of figure out what the next step is here?” Brody added. “Because that’s why Joe Biden walked it back when he was asked if he was going to run in 2024. He’s not committing. So, there’s a lot of problems here.”
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In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Joe Concha, a media and politics columnist, wrote “the White House press secretary attempted to explain the president’s confusion by arguing that Walorski was ‘top of mind’ for Biden. Not the worst excuse, but it still does not explain why he was asking if she was in the room.”
Concha noted the media’s improper coverage of the “Where’s Jackie” gaffe should be the definition of the two kinds of bias.
“(A) Standard bias that seeks to protect a major member of a political party by excusing his or her actions; (B) Relatedly, the bias of omission, which is to pretend a newsworthy event never happened,” he wrote.
Concha also gave some examples of the bias in CNN’s and MSNBC’s coverage of Biden in comparison of the same coverage given to former President Donald Trump. He mentioned NBC host Chuck Todd asking Symone Sanders-Townsend, Vice President Kamala Harris’s former communications director, about Biden’s “Where’s Jackie?” moment.
Sanders-Townsend simply contended that Biden merely had a slip of the tongue.
Todd later agreed with her, “People make mistakes, and you try to go from there.”
But Concha noticed there was “no talk from Todd regarding the 25th Amendment, which deals with presidential succession and disability if the president is unable to do his job. That wasn’t the case in 2018 when Todd hosted author Michael Wolff to talk about that very topic regarding the 45th president.”
“It’s not unreasonable to say this is 25th Amendment kind of stuff,” Wolff said four years ago about Trump’s mental state.
“You get the point,” Concha wrote. “With Biden, looking for dead people is a simple mistake that everyone makes. With Trump, it’s time to discuss amendments regarding his mental state and removing him from office.”
“If Joe Biden runs again and wins a second term, he’ll be 86 years old before leaving the Oval Office. That is a prospect few can accept,” he continued.
Biden even called himself a gaffe machine in 2018. He has also shared numerous stories that some in the media have called “tall tales” since they are false or impossible to verify.
During an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sept. 18, Scott Pelley asked Biden: “Some people ask whether you are fit for the job. When you hear that I wonder what you think?”
“Watch me,” Biden responded. “Honest to God, that’s all I think. Watch me. If you think I don’t have the energy level or the mental acuity then you know that’s one thing. It’s another thing to just watch and keep my schedule. Do what I’m doing.”
“How would you say your mental focus is?” Pelley asked.
“Oh, it’s focused,” Biden replied, chuckling to himself. “I say it’s, I haven’t. Look, I have trouble even mentioning, even saying to myself in my own head the number of years. I no more think of myself as being as old as I am than fly. I mean it’s just not, ah, I haven’t observed anything in terms of, there’s not things I don’t do now that I did before.”
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN
