Donald Trump’s cognitive decline is “more evident” than Joe Biden’s, with “speech difficulties and serious, repeated errors” but both are worrying, a professor has warned.
University of British Columbia politics professor Paul Quirk assessed the cognitive functioning of both presidential candidates after a series of gaffes raised questions about their fitness to hold office.
He told Newsweek that Trump, 77,’s cognitive decline is more obvious, but that Biden’s “cognitive failure” could cause him to refuse to relinquish control if necessary during his second term.
Both candidates have been criticized for mental errors in recent weeks: Trump confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, while a damning report described Biden, 81, as an “old man with limited memory.”
Quirk said: “From the campaign’s point of view, Biden’s age should be less of an issue than Trump’s more apparent cognitive decline, shown in slurred speech and serious, repeated errors at one campaign rally after another. “.
Professor Quirk warned that Biden might not recognize his own decline and refuse to resign as a result
Trump’s decline is ‘more evident’ and a bigger problem for his campaign, says Professor Quirk
Although Trump’s decline is more obvious, Quirk said, Biden’s is equally concerning: “The legitimate concern about Biden’s age is that at the end of a second term, he would be almost five years older than he is now.”
‘By then there is clear potential for serious cognitive failure to occur.
“And if it were to happen, the real danger is that Biden will not recognize it and refuse to allow his vice president to take power.”
Quirk’s assessment follows a series of blunders that have called into question the mental fitness of Trump and Biden.
Although the report did not recommend bringing charges against the 81-year-old, it provided a cascade of damaging findings about the files found in Biden’s garage, as well as the president’s fitness for office.
In interviews with investigators, the report said Biden was confused about the dates he was vice president and couldn’t remember the year his son Beau died.
The report said: “He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013, when did I stop being vice president?”), and forgetting the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still vice president?”)’.
Professor Quirk assessed the cognitive functioning of the two front-runner presidential candidates.
One of the reasons they decided not to press charges was because “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview, as a sympathetic, well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.” ‘.
Earlier this month, Biden’s staff struggled to explain why the president repeatedly referred to deceased European leaders as if they were still in power.
He made another mistake when he referred to French President Emmanuel Macron as Francois Mitterrand, the country’s former leader. Mitterrand died 28 years ago.
Biden then confused the late German leader Helmut Kohl with former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
And in November, he boasted that he had a “code to blow up the world” while chatting about nuclear weapons during a visit to the world’s largest windmill factory in Colorado.
On the same visit, Biden called Trump “Congressman Trump.”
Meanwhile, Trump, speaking at a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, ahead of the state’s key primary election, repeatedly misreferred to Nikki Haley as being responsible for security during the riot at the US Capitol, rather than Nancy Pelosi.
He said, “By the way, they never reported on the mob on January 6. You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, you know, they… you know they destroyed all the information, all the evidence, everything?” “. he eliminated it and destroyed everything. All of it.’
Trump also appeared to slur his words while delivering speeches about the campaign trial.
And he appeared to confuse Biden and Obama, repeatedly suggesting that former Democratic President Barack Obama was still in office.
In recent months he has referred to the “Obama administration” in the present tense and Obama as the “current president” while campaigning.
Both Trump and Biden have tried to downplay the mistakes, insisting they are fine.
After the Justice Department report, Biden told the nation ‘I know what the hell I’m doing!’ and insisted that ‘my memory is fine.’
Similarly, in January Trump told voters that he had taken a mental fitness test and had “come out excellent.”
More than 8.5 in 10 American voters think President Joe Biden is too old for another term, and only 62% feel the same about Trump.
But voters were unconvinced with a recent NBC poll that found a total of 62 percent of voters had major concerns about Biden’s physical and mental health and 34 percent of voters had major concerns about Trump’s. .
Likewise, the vast majority of American voters (86 percent) said President Joe Biden, 81, is too old for another term, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll.
And 62 percent of respondents said former President Trump, 77, is also too old for another term in the White House.
Professor Quirk believes Democrats want Biden to step aside, but there is no way to force him to do so.
He said: ‘Many, or even most, senior Democrats might prefer that he step aside.
“But they have no mechanisms to discuss the issue in secret, come to a collective decision and impose it on Biden, other party members and primary voters.”
But he added that the situation was not yet serious: ‘At this point, we have not seen clear evidence that Biden has had enough cognitive decline to compromise his performance as president.
‘It has been, if anything, surprisingly effective in political terms. “The special counsel report that called attention to Biden’s “memory problems” has been widely disparaged as a partisan coup.”
