Former President Donald Trump supports mental competency tests for presidents — despite a series of recent missteps, including accusing a “cognitively impaired” President Biden of launching the US into “World War II.”
Voicing his opposition to presidential age limits, Trump predictably boasted that he had “passed” the competency tests while in office as he gave them his support.
“No, but there must be efficiency. I’m ready for the test,” Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday.
“I took the test two years ago, three years ago,” Trump added. “And I managed to do it. I got everything right.”
One of his rivals, 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley, 51, has called for mandatory testing for politicians aged 75 and over.
That includes Trump, 77, and Biden, 80.
A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that 77% of US adults sampled favor a maximum age for politicians.
“It’s always time for a new generation. But, you know, some of the world’s greatest leaders have been in their 80s,” Trump said in the interview. “And Biden is not too old. I don’t think Biden is too old. But I don’t think he’s competent, and that’s a bigger problem.”
On Friday, Trump raised eyebrows during a speech at the “Pray Vote Stand” summit in Washington, DC, where he claimed that Biden’s “cognitive disability” would lead the US into “World War II” if he won a second term.
The former president noted that he knows older entrepreneurs like Bernie Marcus who are still sharp in their old age.AP
In another mishap, Trump appeared to insinuate that he was beating former President Barack Obama in the polls.
“As you know, crooked Joe Biden and radical left thugs have been weaponizing law enforcement to arrest their leading political opponents, and ahead of many, including Obama — I’ll tell you what,” Trump said.
The Republicans have knocked President Biden above his age and sacrificed bad words and real accidents.REUTERS
“You look at Obama and you look at some of the things he’s done, it’s the same thing,” he continued. “This country is so divided and we did it – with Obama, we won an election that everyone said was unwinnable.”
Obama was president when Trump dispatched Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Trump’s chief GOP foe, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 45, argued last week that “they’re probably going to put age limits on some of these offices.”
“The presidency is not a job for an 80-year-old,” he told CBS News. “You’re talking about a job where you have to give it 100%. We need an energetic president. And I think if the founders could look at this again, I think they would probably put an age limit on some of these offices.
Biden is also no stranger to public gaffes. Last year, for example, he called the late Rep. Indiana’s Jackie Walorski during a White House event about eight weeks after she died.
More recently, he falsely suggested he was at Ground Zero the day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Biden’s autobiography places him in Washington, DC.
Nikki Haley kicked off her campaign with a call for mental competency tests for aging politicians. Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Trump, who is known to drink Coca-Cola and eat McDonalds, continued to play down his age during the NBC interview and emphasized his strong genetics.
“Well, I’ll be at the end of it,” Trump said when a modest Kristen Welker said she would be in her 80s. “My father lived longer than that. My mother lived longer than that. So genetically, that’s a good thing.”
Trump’s father, Fred lived to be 93 and his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod to 88. At the end of the hypothetical second term, Trump would be 82 years old.
Over the summer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had two very public freezing episodes.REUTERS
Polls have fueled widespread unease about Biden’s age. At 80, he is already the oldest president in US history and would be 86 by the end of his hypothetical second term.
Trump previously expressed similar sentiments about age during an interview with Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM program.
Donald Trump has argued that he is physically still at the top of his game and has boasted about his golfing skills.MSNBC
“A lot of people, they’re amazing in their 80s. There is great wisdom if you are not in a position like him. But if you go back 25 years, he wasn’t in the sharpest of shots either,” he said.
Both Trump and Biden remain the undisputed front-runners in their respective contests to be their party’s standard-bearers.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
