Tipsheet

WH Aides Instruct Biden to Ramp Up Attacks on Trump to Disguise His 'Poor Memory'

President Joe Biden is reportedly amping up his attacks against his 2024 election opponent, former President Trump, to divert American’s attention away from his declining mental health. 

According to a CNN report, Biden has instructed his campaign advisors to speak poorly about the so-called “orange man bad narrative,” or Trump as Democrats like to put it. 

CNN spoke to several sources claiming Biden is trying to shift the public’s atrocious view about him instead of focusing on a “back to normalcy” campaign. 

The thrust of Biden’s direction, delivered to his senior-most staff, was to significantly ramp up the campaign’s efforts to highlight the “crazy sh*t” that Trump says in public, according to those sources. The previously unreported instruction from the president appears to demonstrate that Biden himself believes it is critical to paint his presumptive Republican opponent as unhinged and unfit for office. The president’s reelection team has long been focused on hammering home what they say are black-and-white contrasts between Biden and Trump when it comes to their temperaments and world views. Biden campaign advisers say that warning voters about what another four years under a Trump presidency would look like is central to their general election strategy – on everything from foreign policy to reproductive rights to the protection of democratic institutions.

However, this strategy may be complicated given all of the reckless, heedless things Biden has caused during his presidency. Things such as the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, record-breaking inflation and crime, a devastating southern border crisis, and war in the Middle East, as well as tens of billions of U.S. dollars that have gone to Ukraine. 

“Donald Trump is the polar opposite of everything President Biden stands for and has accomplished since he took office, and the campaign’s top priority over the next nine months will be laying out that stark choice for voters,” Ammar Moussa, the Biden campaign’s director of rapid response, told CNN. 

The 81-year-old president has a lot of work to do if he wants to persuade voters he is the better choice to run this country for another four years. 

However, according to polls, most Americans side with Trump over Biden on critical issues. 

Over the weekend, I reported on a recent ABC/ Ipsos poll that found that likely voters trust Trump more on issues such as the economy, immigration, and crime. 

Regarding the economy, Trump had a 12-point advantage, with 43 percent trusting the former president more than the 31 percent who said the same of Biden. 

Similarly, Trump held a significant advantage over Biden on immigration.