What did he do for this to happen?
On Saturday (July 9), The New York Times published a report about the general feeling among White House aides regarding President Joe Biden’s advanced age.
The piece, which details how White House aides and Democrats have become “uncomfortable” about Biden’s age (79), starts by revealing that aides had to cut a planned 10-day trip to Europe and the Middle East into two after they realized “extended travel might be unnecessarily taxing for a 79-year-old president.”
Yet despite one aide calling the scrapped travel plans “crazy,” the more acceptable reason for reorganizing Biden’s trip is citing “political and diplomatic reasons.”
However, The New York Times Chief White House Correspondent, Peter Baker, noted in the piece that “he reality is that managing the schedule of the oldest president in American history presents distinct challenges.”
Baker continued, “And as Mr. Biden insists he plans to run for a second term, his age has increasingly become an uncomfortable issue for him, his team, and his party.”
The Times’ report also details a number of shortcomings Biden experienced during his European trip, including needing guidance from another world leader to look at the cameras for a photo op and having British Prime Minister Borris Johnson answer a question on his behalf after he couldn’t hear it.
Biden, who is currently one-year older than President Ronald Reagan was when he ended his second term, has kept a busy schedule with former senior officials and advisors agreeing the President “remained intellectually engaged, asking smart questions at meetings, grilling aides on points of dispute, calling them late at night, picking out that weak point on Page 14 of a memo and rewriting speeches like his abortion statement on Friday right up until the last minute.”
But behind the scenes, aides quietly watch out for the five-day-a-week President, concerned that he might trip on a wire or stumble over his words.
