Gulf Today Report
Doubts are rising about the ability of US President Joe Biden, who is 81 years old, to lead the United States for a new presidential term starting next year, if he is re-elected, after many repeated missteps and verbal gaffes, and his recent severe confusion between people and titles, the living and the dead.
In the midst of his talk about the Gaza crisis, the American President described his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, as “the President of Mexico,” in his third slip of the tongue in less than a week.
Biden also confused the matter between a European leader and her deceased predecessor, as he said during an election event that he met with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, instead of Angela Merkel.
A few days ago, Biden said that he spoke to the late French President François Mitterrand, instead of current President Emmanuel Macron, while also talking about the same G7 summit that was held in June 2021.
After many missteps and slips of the tongue that accompanied President Biden recently, a number of Republican lawmakers are seeking to exploit this opportunity against the Democratic president, as they called for activating the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which allows for the possibility of removing the US president if it is proven that he is unable to lead the country.
The Twenty-fifth Amendment explains the methods of transferring power in the United States, in the event of the president’s resignation, death, impeachment, or temporary incapacity.
Opinion polls show that American voters are increasingly concerned about Biden's age, who will be 82 years old at the beginning of his second term, and 86 years old at the end.
Voters seem less concerned about the age of his potential rival, Republican Donald Trump, who is 77 years old and running for another presidential term, but he also made some mistakes.
Recently, Trump mixed up his rival for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, with former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Last year, Trump also mentioned Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as Turkey's leader, warning that the United States was about to enter "World War II," which ended in 1945.
On the other hand, US President Joe Biden strongly defended himself on Thursday, expressing his anger after a report was issued that exonerated him in an investigation into his retention of secret documents, but he described him as “an elderly man with a weak memory.”
Biden appeared very angry when he appeared on a live broadcast from the White House, due to a report in which he was unable to even remember the date of his son Beau’s death in 2015, as well as other major milestones in his life.
Biden confirmed, “My memory is fine.”
He added, striving to suppress his emotion, “There is even an indication that I do not remember the date of my son’s death.” How dare he mention that?
Other than that, the report prepared by Special Prosecutor Robert Hoare brought good news for Biden, as it exonerated him of any misconduct in keeping secret documents that he used, when he was Vice President under Barack Obama, in his private home and a former office.
This investigation is completely different from another criminal investigation targeting Biden’s likely rival in the upcoming presidential elections, former President Donald Trump, who is accused of carrying a large amount of secret documents upon leaving the White House in 2021 and of obstructing attempts to recover them later.
However, Hoare dropped a heavy political bomb nine months before the presidential elections in November, as he wrote in the report that Biden seemed “an elderly man with good intentions and a weak memory.”