President Joe Biden‘s team pushed back on a special counsel report released last week that highlighted problems with the president’s mental acuity, but his best response could do as much damage to his reputation as it does to the report.
One clear way that the president can try to counter the report and reassure voters is by being more visible. But that could prove disastrous on its own due to Biden’s flubs. The president most recently misidentified the president of Egypt at the end of remarks last week during an appearance he wanted to make in order to push back on special counsel Robert Hur’s report.
“I don’t think he can go, ‘Well, let’s do a town hall and ask me anything you want.’ I don’t think it’s going to work,” Democratic strategist James Carville told ABC News. “It certainly may work once, but it’s not going to work five times. And of course, everybody’s looking for the one hesitation — the one mispronunciation. And you’re going to get it.”
Another Democratic strategist, however, said that putting the president in front of audiences where voters can see him be active and hear him speak would help reassure voters. Biden has long relied on retail politics to get him elected by talking about key topics through telling personal stories.
“I think there are voters who have real concerns about the president’s fitness for the job,” a Democratic strategist familiar with the campaign’s strategy said. “The most effective way to do that is to get him out in front of voters in unscripted environments to demonstrate his mental fitness and that he is up for the job.”
Some Democratic strategists are encouraging the president to go after his chief rival, former President Donald Trump, by focusing on Trump’s own missteps. Trump, for example, recently said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was the leader of Turkey. He also said he beat former President Barack Obama in 2016 instead of Hillary Clinton.
At a rally last month, the former president mixed up former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his only competitor left in the presidential primary contest, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Trump tried to play off the mix-up as something he did on purpose, saying the two are interchangeable in his mind because he dislikes them both.
“Every single time Donald Trump opens his mouth, he’s confused, deranged, lying, or worse,” Biden presidential campaign adviser T.J. Ducklo said in a news release Friday. “Beltway reporters may be numb to Trump’s horrifying candidacy defined by chaos, division, and violence — but the American people are the ones who will suffer and die if he’s allowed anywhere near the Oval Office again.”
Trump is also just four years younger than Biden, and 59% of voters in a recent poll said both leaders are too old to be president. Biden and Trump are 81 and 77 years old, respectively. Another 27% of respondents said just Biden was too old, compared to 3% who said the same of Trump.
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Hur has faced backlash from the White House and Democrats over his characterization of the president. The special counsel had described Biden as an “elderly man” with “poor memory” whom no jury could convict due to a lack of a “mental state of willfulness.”
Biden’s supporters have rejected the broader accusation on the president’s memory, saying Hur could highlight specific moments when the president’s memory failed but not more broadly.