'Senile' or 'merciless': GOP mocked for contradictory attacks on Biden

Donald Trump and the GOP can’t figure out how best to attack President Joe Biden, according to commentary from NBC News Monday.

“Sleepy Joe” – the nickname favored by Trump for his Democratic foe in 2020 – has transformed into “Crooked Joe,” the mastermind of a scheme to weaponize the federal government against the former president.

But the two are vastly contradictory descriptions, NBC News’ Sahil Kapur wrote.

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“With the "Crooked Joe" persona, Trump routinely implies that a man he has suggested is not mentally fit has secretly been manipulating the Justice Department — as well as state prosecutors he has no authority over, and even secretive grand juries who were legally required to approve the indictments — while covering his tracks so well that House Republican investigators with subpoena power struggle to uncover proof,” he wrote.

“‘I’m confused. Is dementia-riddled Joe Biden also controlling the people in all of these separate grand juries in four different jurisdictions in four states?’ quipped former GOP operative-turned-Trump-critic Tim Miller on Bulwark's ‘The Next Level Podcast.’”

And the confusion over how best to portray Biden runs throughout the GOP, Kapur wrote.

“The GOP's internal conflict on how to portray Biden — senile and incompetent, or corrupt and merciless — is also on display in the 2024 presidential primary,” he wrote.

While some candidates, including Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott, focus on accusations of weaponization of the Department of Justice, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley sees portraying the 80-year-old president as “weak and frail” as more useful to her campaign.

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“Because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely,” she said earlier this year.

In reaction, Biden’s spokesperson Kevin Munoz told NBC News: “Donald Trump is running on the same, unpopular agenda that lost him the election in 2020. No name-calling that he shouts into his MAGA echo chamber changes that fact.”

He went on, “Donald Trump may come up with a lot of nicknames for President Biden, but we have a better one: winner.”