Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it is fair for voters to ask questions about President Biden’s age in the 2024 election.
If he wins reelection, Mr. Biden will be 82 years old when he takes the oath of office.
Mrs. Clinon said the president’s age, however, is far less concerning than the prospect of former President Donald Trump winning back The White House.
Speaking at the Financial Times Weekend festival in Washington, Mrs. Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee who lost to Mr. Trump, was asked about Mr. Biden’s recent stumble on a flight of stairs in Japan.
“We’ve had presidents who have fallen before who were a lot younger and people didn’t go into heart palpations, but his age is an issue and people have every right to consider it,” she said.
“But you know he has this great saying, and I think he is right, don’t judge him by running against the Almighty but against the alternative, and I am of the camp that I think he is determined to run, he has a good record that three years ago people would not have predicted would have gotten done,” Mrs. Clinton said. “He doesn’t get the credit yet he deserves for what is happening out in the country in terms of jobs and growth and planning for the future.”
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released this month found 68% of Americans say he is too old to be president.
Mr. Biden has tried to spin his age into a positive, saying he has “acquired a hell of a lot of wisdom” over his life.
“I know more than the vast majority of people,” Mr. Biden said in a recent interview on MSNBC. “I’m more experienced than anybody who has ever run for the office and I think I’ve proven myself to be honorable as well as also effective.”
Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, warned a Trump victory would be “disastrous” for the nation.
“If Trump wins, which I do not believe will happen … it would be the end of democracy in the United States. It would be the end of Ukraine,” said Mrs. Clinton, who was first lady and then a U.S. senator from New York before serving as secretary of state in the Obama administration.
Mrs. Clinton predicted that Mr. Trump would pull the U.S. out of NATO. She said it is mind-blogging people that would want to reelect him.
“Any sensible person who looks at this former president and says, ‘Oh let’s do this again,’ needs an intervention because he has only gotten worse,” she said.
Mr. Trump shocked the political establishment in 2016 when he defeated Mrs. Clinton in the presidential race.
Mrs. Clinton faced immense blowback weeks before the election after she described half of Mr. Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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