A shocking new poll finds that half of American voters expect President Biden to again forget where he is in the upcoming crucial presidential debate, and more than a third expect him to disappear from the stage.
A staggering 70% expect the gaffe-prone 81-year-old president to slip up during the TV debate, while 40% think the oldest president in history will be so frail he will have trouble even standing up. JL Partners poll released Thursday.
Polls suggest Biden’s debate rival, former President Donald Trump, is likely to win the debate handily, with an overwhelming 90% of Republican voters confident that Biden will win.
But most worryingly, 49% expect Biden to forget where he is, and 41% even think he might walk off the debate stage in the wrong direction.
When asked what word best describes their view of the president, respondents overwhelmingly answered “old.”
The result was Biden being awkward. I started to wander. During a skydiving demonstration at the G7 summit in southern Italy on Thursday, the host country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, tried to pull him back towards the group.
As the leaders of the world’s richest democracies applauded the evening’s parachute spectacle, the president’s attention was noticeably away from their peers.
At that point, Meloni walked over to Biden, stepped backwards to face the other leaders and touched the president’s right arm to signal it was time to rejoin the group.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates defended the president, arguing that the footage, widely distributed by news agencies, was distorted.
“[Biden is] “I said ‘Congratulations’ to one of the divers and gave him the thumbs up,” Bates said on X.
Biden’s staff have long confided that the president, who will be 86 if he completes a second term, has moments of public gaffes as well as losing focus in private conversations.
The debate, which will take place in Atlanta, will be the first time Biden and Trump go head-to-head in the 2024 election campaign.
