A double standard of presidential qualifications?

Sep 08, 2024

Three weeks after Joe Biden’s horrific debate performance against Donald Trump on June 27, under pressure from party leaders and top donors, Biden graciously and correctly stepped aside from his campaign for a second term as President, which he desperately wanted.

It was a debate performance that surprised and shocked the Democratic Party.

Repeatedly, Biden, 81, trailed off and wandered in his responses to Trump and/or the debate moderators.

America was surprised and shaken. There was clear evidence that the President had aged and was no longer as sharp and coherent as he once was.

CNN, which coordinated and moderated the debate, identified Biden’s response to Trump on a question about abortion as one of Biden’s most incomprehensible of the evening.

Trump had tried to talk his way around the abortion issue. His hand-off of the issue to Biden for a response should have provided an easy target for Biden.

“We brought it (abortion) back to the states and the country is now coming together on this issue. It’s been a great thing,” Trump said, inaccurately portraying the views of most Americans on this issue.

Biden started strong: “It’s been a terrible thing what you’ve done.”

Then, he wandered into incoherence:

“Look, there’s so many young women who have been – including a young woman who just was murdered, and he – he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by a – by – by an immigrant coming in, and they talk about that. But here’s the deal, there’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their – by their in-laws, by their – by their spouses, brothers and sisters, by – just – it’s just – it’s just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it. And they tried to arrest them when they cross state lines.”

Three weeks later, he announced his withdrawal from his pursuit of a second term in office.

Spin forward six weeks

Donald Trump, 78, now the oldest major-party nominee for president in history, was answering questions posed by members of the Economic Club of New York.

One of the questions came from Reshma Saujani, the founder and CEO of Moms First:

“If you win in November,” she asked, “Can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”

It was a clear, simple question.

Here is the complete verbatim transcription of Trump’s response:

“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down — you know, I was, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that — because, look, child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it — in this country, you have to have it.

“But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to – but they’ll get used to it very quickly – and it’s not gonna stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.

“Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including childcare, that it’s going to take care. We’re gonna have — I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country because I have to stay with child care.

“I want to stay with childcare, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world.”

What?

In what way is this response, not guided by a prepared text, any less indicative of age-deteriorated thinking and speaking than what Biden said in June in a similar situation that resulted in his withdrawal from the campaign?

And what can or will America do about it?

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