Tipsheet

CNN Analyst Upset By Questions About Biden's Health

Cortney O'Brien
Cortney O'Brien  |  June 12, 2019 1:15 PM

CNN's Chris Cillizza is upset with media who are "crossing the line" by questioning former Vice President Joe Biden's health.

"But even partisanship should have its limits," Cillizza writes in his recent op-ed. "And one of those limits should be raising entirely unfounded questions about a presidential candidate's health."

In recent days, President Trump has been trading barbs with Biden, the current 2020 Democratic frontrunner. He called the former VP "another low I.Q. individual," and said he's "slower" than usual, among other insults. 

Cillizza is concerned by the rhetoric.

These attacks clearly are designed to raise questions in voters' minds about electing Biden, who would be 78 on Inauguration Day 2021. That would make Biden the oldest president elected to a first term, breaking the record of -- you guessed it! -- Donald Trump, who was elected at age 70. Which makes the he's-too-old-to-do-the-job argument a little tin-eared.

The Point: Trump -- and his surrogates, including those at Fox -- showed they were willing to do anything and everything to get him elected in 2016. These baseless hits on Biden's health -- more than a year before the election -- suggest they'll be following that same blueprint again.

I'm not the only one to notice that Cillizza forgot how media have peddled the idea that President Trump is mentally unfit to serve. Last year, the White House physician at the time even had to give a press conference amid the media obsession with Trump's health records in order to dispel some of the rumors.

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Twitchy provided several other examples, from CNN alone, of the times media deemed Trump mentally unwell without merit. Brian Stelter was a repeat offender.

Biden isn't exactly innocent in all this. On Tuesday he said Trump was an "existential threat" to America.