The White House is testing a new line in its defense of President Joe Biden amid concerns he, at 80, is too old to seek reelection next year.
“80’s the new 40, didn’t you hear?” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre quipped to reporters Friday. “In 2019, he got the same criticism; in 2020, he got the same criticism; in 2022, he got the same criticism. And every time, he beats the naysayers.”
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When asked how Biden plans to counter the concerns, expressed in polling and in an opinion piece written this week by favored Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Jean-Pierre contended she cannot “speak to every American out there and their concerns.”
“What I can speak to is what this president has done, right? I can speak to his experience, I can speak to the wisdom that he has, I can speak to his record,” she said. “I can just stay on our message, the platform that we are trying to push forward, and that is delivering for the American people. We believe that we’re doing that.”
Ignatius wrote this week that Biden should not contest the 2024 election, arguing the president “risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.”
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“Biden has in many ways remade himself as president,” the columnist wrote. “He is no longer the garrulous glad-hander I met when I first covered Congress more than four decades ago.”
“Biden’s age isn’t just a Fox News trope; it’s been the subject of dinner-table conversations across America this summer,” he added.
