Former US President Donald Trump has been mocked on social media after he claimed that President Joe Biden is “cognitively impaired” and would lead the country into “World War II” if he were re-elected during a Washington, DC, summit on Friday. Trump said, “We have a man who is totally corrupt and the worst president in the history of our country, who is cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead, and is now in charge of dealing with Russia and a possible nuclear war.” Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech millionaire and former Harvard rapper running against Trump, is outperforming expectations in the 2024 GOP race. Ramaswamy announced his candidacy for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination in February 2023.
He is the son of Indian immigrants, was Harvard and Yale-educated, and became a conservative firebrand after writing anti-woke books and regularly appearing on Fox News. Ramaswamy has had to struggle for exposure in a crowded field for the Republican nomination, but his past shows he isn’t afraid of a challenge. Trump appeared to mix up Biden and former President Barack Obama in the same speech, saying he was ahead of Obama in the 2024 election polls.
He also seemed to suggest that Obama had been his runner-up in the 2016 election, saying, “With Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won,” then corrected himself and specified his opponent was actually Hillary Clinton. Trump’s mix-ups raise doubts about the former president and 2024 candidate’s age and mental fitness. Americans have already shown concern about 80-year-old President Biden’s mental and physical health, despite his physician declaring him a “healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male” who is “fit for duty” in February.
Biden is the country’s oldest president and first octagenarian to hold the post. Trump is not much younger, having turned 77 in June. A June NBC poll showed that 68% of voters have concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health, while 55% said the same about Trump.
Another poll run by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that 77% of respondents found Biden to be too old to successfully hold the presidency for another four years, while 51% thought Trump unfit. That’s a combination of both Democrats and Republicans. Americans also support proposals for examinations of the mental and physical health of presidential candidates, research from Insider and Morning Consult shows.
