Donald Trump has said he does not support an age limit for running for president, but he does support a mental competency test.
Trump, 77, said NBC News, in an interview set to air Sunday, that he thought age doesn’t matter but cognitive function does when examining Biden’s brain function.
“I don’t think Biden is too old,” he said. “But I think he’s incompetent, and that’s a bigger problem.”
But Trump made his own blunder during an appearance in Washington DC earlier on Saturday. He said Biden would lead the US into World War II – which ended in 1945 – and appeared to say he was beating Barack Obama in the polls.
Obama was president between 2009 and 2017 and cannot be re-elected.
Joe Biden, 80, is the oldest person ever elected president, and his age is a concern for many voters across the political spectrum.
If Biden wins back the White House, he would be 82 years old at the start of his second term in January 2025.
If Trump wins, he would be 78 – the same age as Biden when he started his first term in 2021.
Donald Trump told NBC News in an interview set to air Sunday that he supports a mental competency test for anyone running for president
Trump (77) said Joe Biden (80) was not too old, just ‘incompetent’
Trump said that many successful political figures in history were older than him.
“You know, some of the greatest world leaders are already in their 80s,” he said.
“By the way, I’m nowhere near 80.”
And he said the 10-minute mental evaluation he took during his presidency, designed to screen for mild cognitive impairment or early dementia, should be mandatory.
“You know, I took a test two years ago, three years ago,” he told NBC’s Kristen Welker.
“And like the doctors said – and it was in front of the doctors and a really big deal at Walter Reed (hospital), which is an incredible place.
‘And I accepted it. I understand everything well.’
‘I’m all for testing. I honestly think testing would be a good thing.
“A lot of people say it’s not constitutional to do this. But I would be for testing, for testing to make sure everything is fine.
“But many people say that is not possible because of the Constitution.”
In March, a Pew report found that most world leaders (35 percent) are in their 60s, while the media is 62 years old.
Biden, seen leaving church in Delaware on Saturday, is dogged by questions about whether he is too old to run for a second term
Chile has the youngest head of government: Gabriel Boric is 37. Paul Biya of Cameroon is 90 – the only world leader in his 90s.
About a quarter are in their 50s, while 18 percent are each in their 40s or 70s.
Biden is among the 5 percent of leaders who are in their 80s.
Biden and Trump are both out of step with the average American, who is 38 years old.
According to two recent polls, Biden’s age is a bigger issue for voters than Trump’s.
Both the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal found that three-quarters of Americans consider Biden too old to be president, while only about half say the same about Trump.
Biden is not helped by his repeated blunders.
Joe Biden is seen speaking to troops in Anchorage, Alaska, on Monday, the 22nd anniversary of September 11. He is the first president not to spend the anniversary at the site of one of the three plane crashes
Biden (center) visits Ground Zero on September 20, 2001 with fellow senators Ted Kennedy (left) and Barbara Mikulski (center, in poncho). He was in Washington DC on September 12, 2001
On Thursday, the White House had to redact a transcript of a speech after he declared that he had reduced unemployment among “African Americans and Hispanic workers and veterans, you know, the workers without high school diplomas.”
He had to say that he had reduced unemployment among black people, Hispanics, veterans and people without degrees.
On Monday, the anniversary of September 11, he told troops in Alaska that he was in New York the day after the terrorist attacks.
“Ground Zero in New York – I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building,” he said.
Yet Biden was in Washington DC – something he notes in his 2017 autobiography. C-Span footage shows him speaking in Congress on September 12, 2001.