Trump has 'far more to lose' as 'unforced gaffes' indicate mental decline: report

Plans by the Republican Party to make President Joe Biden's age a central theme of the 2024 presidential campaign could be heading for a speedbump as presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump stumbles through speeches — raising questions about his mental decline.

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday, the panel raised concern after watching clips of the former president mistaking where he was as he gave a speech, while calling a foreign leader a great friend and then linking him to the wrong country.

As MSNBC's Johnathan Lemire put it, the former president has been "erratic" as of late.

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According to a report from the New York Times, Trump's troubles during speeches have not only caught the attention of the press, which hangs on his every word, but also his opponents for the GOP presidential nomination who are using it as a cudgel to peel away voters.

Asked about the former president's recent string of gaffes, Gov. Ron DeSantis made a point of telling reporters, "In 2016, he was freewheeling, he’s out there barnstorming the country. Now, it’s just a different guy. And it’s sad to see.”

As the Times notes, Trump is just three years younger than President Biden, and the daily drumbeat about Biden's age as an object of concern in the upcoming election loses some of its sting the more Trump stumbles on the stump.

According to the report, "In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also told supporters not to vote, and claimed to have defeated President Barack Obama in an election. He has praised the collective intellect of an Iranian-backed militant group that has long been an enemy of both Israel and the United States, and repeatedly mispronounced the name of the armed group that rules Gaza."

As the Times' Michael C. Bender and Michael Gold wrote, with all of Trump's other baggage — which includes multiple criminal indictments — Trump "has far more to lose in a general-election matchup."

Explaining a Franklin & Marshall College poll that asked voters about concerns about an elderly president, the director of the poll, Berwood Yost, admitted, "The age issue is one that, if Trump gets tarred with the same brush as Biden, it really hurts him.”

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