- The latest attempt by the Trump campaign to oppose the Democratic National Convention uses the prime brand’s irreplaceable goodies on the YouTube website and gets a lot of play on Fox News.
- The video combines clips of Joe Biden of the Obama administration, with copies of the presumptive Democratic nominee stuttering or losing his mind at the thought.
- While the Trump campaign trying to portray Biden as unfit for office or in “cognitive decline” is nothing new, the ad marks the most intense iteration of the attack line to date in 2020.
- Biden has been open about stuttering while growing up and has described himself as a “gaffe machine.”
- Visit the Business Insider website for more stories.
The Trump campaign shifted its “cognitive decline” line of attack against Joe Biden into high gear, buying coveted space at the top of the YouTube website with a new ad that also gets a lot of play on Fox News.
The nearly two-minute video compiles clips of Biden from the Obama administration, with copies of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee stuttering as his thoughts of the thought loss on the 2020 campaign track.
Biden, 77, who described himself as a ‘gaffe machine’, has also been open about stuttering while growing up.
The Trump campaign has been trying to paint Biden as unsuitable for office for a while – a task complicated by President Donald Trump’s obsession with a dementia screening test he took – but the YouTube post and its appearance of the ad in Fox News segments on Tuesday demonstrated a more complex push.
Opposing big moments for his Democratic enemies – like this Democratic National Convention this week – has become a staple of Trump’s campaign and presidency.
By Tuesday afternoon, the YouTube video – which was released on Saturday – had been viewed more than 1.7 million times. The clip even made its way to MSNBC, where host “Meet the Press” Chuck Todd used it to lead in a segment about the Trump campaign and tried to settle on a message to defeat Biden.
A spokesman for the Biden campaign on Tuesday responded to the Trump campaign’s ad by quoting the president as describing his cognitive test: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”
Other non-campaign sources, such as the popular “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, have also explored Biden’s mental acuity. A video of Rogan asking questions about Biden’s fitness for office has 2.8 million views, and the leading podcast host has said he will not vote for Biden because he believes the candidate has early dementia.
Biden has brustled about the idea of taking a cognitive test and said he has no worries about Trump’s attacks.
“I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capacity with the cognitive capacity of the man I am against,” Biden told a news conference earlier this month.
—Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) August 18, 2020
