Pro-Trump group ad questions Biden’s mental fitness

June 24, 2020
By JONATHAN EASLEY,  The Hill

An outside group supporting President Trump’s reelection will release a new ad on Wednesday questioning presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s mental fitness.

The Committee to Defend the President is putting about $400,000 behind the ad, which will run online, as well as on cable and broadcast networks in Arizona. Arizona has emerged as a top battleground state in the race for the White House.

The 30-second ad features short clips of Biden stumbling over his words in interviews and on the campaign trail.

“Does Joe Biden have the mental capacity to keep America safe?” the narrator asks. “Is Joe Biden making any sense? Does Joe Biden have dementia? In a world losing its mind, we don’t need a president who has already lost his.”

The Trump campaign and outside GOP groups have pointed to Biden’s verbal stumbles to say that he has lost a step. Biden’s defenders have accused his critics of mocking his stutter.

Biden spokesman Michael Gwin described the allegations in the ad as “desperate smears” meant to distract from Trump’s failures.

“These are more desperate smears from the allies of a President who failed the American people when it mattered the most — someone who echoed the spin of the Chinese government as the coronavirus spread instead of listening to warnings from Vice President Biden and our experts, and someone who’s ordering testing to be slowed down even as cases continue to spike in Arizona and nationally,” Gwin said. “Trump knows he can’t run on a record that’s resulted in a divided country and left 120,000 Americans dead and 20 million unemployed as the greatest public health emergency in a century goes unchecked, so his cronies are busy slinging mud at Vice President Biden, but the American people simply aren’t buying it.

If Biden wins in November, he’ll be 78 years old when he is sworn into office. Trump is currently the oldest president to have been sworn in. He was 70 years old on Inauguration Day in 2016.