Biden Confronts Age Issue In First General Election Ad
President Joe Biden is delivering remarks at a Biden-Harris campaign event at Strath Haven Middle School in Wallingford, Pennsylvania on March 8, 2024. Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via ZUMA
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.After a bruising month of media coverage and political attacks focused on Joe Biden’s age, the president’s campaign is finally responding head-on. Following his energetic State of the Union Address on Thursday night, Biden’s reelection campaign raised a record $10 million in 24 hours, reports NBC News. On Saturday, the campaign launched a major ad buy in swing states that directly addresses the age issue. Welcome to the general election.
“Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret,” Biden kicks off his first ad. “But, here’s the deal. I understand how to get things done for the American people.” The ad ends with an outtake in which someone off camera asks for another take and he responds, “Look, I’m very young, energetic, and handsome.”
The campaign also seeks to portray Trump as the candidate of old and dangerous ideas. In a separate video using footage from the State of the Union, the campaign recasts the age issue as a battle between modern ideas of equality and bigoted views from the past. “The issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas,” Biden says in the speech and video. Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler stressed this point on a call with reporters Friday. The election is “not going to be a contrast in age,” he said. “It’s going to be a contrast in the age of the candidates’ ideas.”
At 81, Biden’s age has been an issue since his first campaign. But the spotlight again turned to Biden’s age in early February when special counsel Robert Hur released his report on the classified documents from the Obama administration found in Biden’s personal possession. The report stated that no criminal charges were forthcoming but took political aim at the president by characterizing him as “an elderly man with a poor memory.” At a press conference to rebut the report, Biden mistakenly fed the media fire around the age issue when he called the Egyptian president the “president of Mexico.”
Team Trump sees Biden’s age as one of its biggest assets. Both the campaign and a pro-Trump super PAC released ads this week portraying the president as weak, confused, and possibly on death’s door. Republicans will surely continue to capitalize on the age issue this week when Hur testifies before a House panel on Tuesday. The Biden campaign is also highlighting Trump’s own gaffes. Its X account is full of videos of Trump mispronouncing words and sounding incoherent. At 77, Trump, of course, is not a young guy either.
But the focus on Biden’s age appears to have taken a toll on his campaign. His poll numbers have slipped and a recent New York Times survey found his support lagging Trump 48 percent to 43 percent, with even his own 2020 voters worried about his age.
Biden is using his cash advantage to try to set the narrative of the campaign. His campaign will spend $30 million on television and digital ads in the next six weeks across battleground states and Black and Latino-focused media. At the end of January, the Biden campaign had $56 million in the bank and another $24 million at the Democratic National Committee. That’s more than the $30 million in Trump’s war chest and $9 million at the Republican National Committee.
Republicans also face the question of whether the the party will begin to pay Trump’s sky-high legal bills stemming from the civil and criminal cases he is facing. On Friday, Trump allies took over the RNC leadership, potentially opening the door to the committee footing some of the former president’s bills. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was selected as the committee’s co-chair while hand-piked ally Michael Whatley became chairman. Top Trump adviser Chris LaCivita will run operations as the RNC’s chief operating officer. The campaign has pledged that no party funds will go toward the candidate’s legal bills, but there’s also nothing stopping this from happening. LaCivita has called these fears “manufactured.” As nearly the entire GOP has fallen in line behind Trump, even GOP senators have given the green light for the party to pay Trump’s bills.
The use of money between the two parties may become yet another way in which Biden’s and Trump’s values are on display. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University professor who is an expert on authoritarianism, predicted that Trump would use RNC funds for his personal use because that’s what authoritarians do.
Believe her: the RNC will be converted to a full-time Trump personal cash box and tool. https://t.co/QLOg4F5hhK
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) March 10, 2024
