thehill | President Trump’s reelection campaign in a new ad is attacking
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s mental acuity, a
frequent target of the president’s.
The
ad, timed to coincide with the virtual Democratic National Convention,
contrasts footage of Biden speaking in 2015 and 2016 with clips of him
seemingly losing his train of thought in 2020.
"Did something
happen to Joe Biden?" reads the opening text of the ad, which then
juxtaposes Biden in 2015 saying in a speech that “he went and became
president, I didn’t go and I’m still vice president” and Biden in 2020
stuttering and repeating “in addition to that” in an interview.
“You
know there’s a, during World War II, uh, you know, Roosevelt came up
with a thing that, uh, you know, was totally different than a, than the,
he called it a, you know...” Biden says in a later clip from a 2020
interview.
Trump himself has repeatedly suggested Biden is in cognitive decline and touted his own performance on a neurological test in contrast. However, some within the Trump campaign were reportedly hesitant to incorporate the attack into campaign messaging, according to Axios. Several campaign advisers reportedly warned the line of attack could offend senior citizens, a demographic with which most polling shows Biden in the lead.
Ultimately, however, those in favor of the attack won out. "We think it's very important that voters fully assess Joe Biden's qualifications and fitness to be president," a senior campaign official told Axios. “Our data show that people are concerned about his ability to do the job.”
The official declined to provide the data in question to Axios.
"Donald Trump is spectacularly failing every conceivable strategic test by ramping up mentions of this subject at all," Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in response to the ad.nbsp;
