Donald Trump desperately tries to keep ‘Waddling Joe’ as his opponent | Opinion

Former President Donald Trump is aspiring to become the oldest person ever elected president, which would make him the oldest president if he is re-elected in January.

I’ll admit, when I think of Trump, age isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. It’s the bombastic attitude that comes to mind, and that’s where the insults begin if you’re not one of his supporters. Trump has been an artificially unhealthy orange color for some time now. Hair is always hair. As a native New Yorker, I’ve lived with it for a long time.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is a man who has managed to accomplish a surprising amount with just a little bit of grey hair and a little bit of hair. And, of course, he is now older than Trump. Biden was younger than Trump’s age of 78 when he was sworn in, but that was because of his hair.

Trump is loath to mention his age during speeches, or indeed his plans for the country (as we’ve noted before in these pages, Trump currently pretends he has never heard of Project 2025, an evil plan to gut American democracy).

And his vagrant, populist style has hardly been untouched by age. His opponents, who have always viewed his words as a smorgasbord of nasty rhetoric, fail to understand that he can read a crowd better than anyone around him and tailor his words, and more importantly, his tone, to suit the crowd. He can move a crowd to tears of outrage. He can elicit ridicule. He can bring a crowd to discontent the way a good pastor can bring an evangelical crowd to religious ecstasy.

The shell that is Biden can still emit a little fire and brimstone, but he can also confuse Russian President Putin with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and appoint Trump as his vice president.

He is exactly who Trump wants to take on, and 45 is desperately trying to keep it up against “Staggering Joe.”

I think Biden has been a pretty good president under very tough circumstances. The conflicts and complexities of foreign policy are enormous, and Biden has handled them with strength and determination, but with mixed successes and failures. I am convinced that a mercurial isolationist like Trump would not have been able to deal successfully with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other nations seeking to join forces with this very real axis of evil.

Biden believes in alliances and a world order that has served America so well, that has made us richer than greed could ever imagine, that has made us the greatest power the world has ever seen. For decades, the American passport has truly been our passport to the world.

At home, the president is always over-praised and over-blamed on the economy, and when things are messed up like they are right now with the economy, people can give him as much credit and blame as they want.

Inflation is awful and it means people like you and me get poorer. (I won’t even mention the rich getting richer because in our system that’s what they do.) The job market is mixed and while unemployment is low, there are so few good jobs that you’re forced to pay the people who flip your burgers $20 an hour so you can buy your own burger.

Biden’s environmental honesty looks good, but meanwhile we continue to drill like never before.

Overall, this is a mediocre outcome that probably won’t inspire much enthusiasm, regardless of the election cycle.

But Biden was our bulwark against Trump and tyranny. He was seen as competent enough to get the job done. We all followed that plan, at least during the primaries, and believed that, whatever his flaws, Biden had the best chance of staving off the darkness.

But in the end, all of the Fox News and Newsmax reporting was right: Joe is more old than old, and as we all saw in the debates, he is losing, or was losing.

And people saw the signs that were clearly there and started looking back. George Clooney revealed that Biden wasn’t doing so well a few months ago after the secret was leaked. The New York Times The paper had already launched a newspaper-wide attack on Biden, citing his age and infirmity, but the casting of Clooney was a severe blow.

Suddenly, the men and women who have spent countless hours around the president — reporters — have realized the obvious and decided to communicate it to those of us who don’t follow Biden and his administration around the clock: He’s a bit old.

Whether Biden stays or goes, he is now greatly weakened. His own performance, the loss of the media that had always been on his side (including me), and now the collapse of support within the party that has loved him for so long (although perhaps not as enthusiastically as he would have liked) have completely destroyed any chance he had of beating Trump.

And Trump loves it.

That’s what you should do.

This is a Republican dream scenario. Who knows if Vice President Kamala Harris will be a dud or a big success, but why take that risk? Same with any other candidate. What more could Donald Trump and the Republican Party ask for than a blank slate where the name of the Democratic candidate would be?

There is only one message to send to Biden and his team: say it loud and clear: Stumbling Joe must go.

We might all regret it later.

Jason Fields is Newsweek’s deputy opinion editor.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.