Hillary Clinton Says Voters Should Ignore Biden’s ‘Old’ Age and Vote for Him Anyway to ‘Save’ Democracy

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during a panel at the Vital Voices Global Festival in Washington on May 5, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that voters shouldn’t worry about President Joe Biden’s “old” age and should vote for him anyway because that’s “how you’re going to save democracy,” though she did not address voters’ concerns about the president’s apparent cognitive decline.

“Somebody the other day said to me: ‘Well, but, you know, Joe Biden’s old,'” Ms. Clinton recalled during a Super Tuesday interview on the “Mornings with Zerlina” radio program.

“I said, ‘You know what, Joe Biden is old. Let’s go ahead and accept the reality. Joe Biden is old,'” she said of the commander-in-chief, who will be turning 82 in November.

President Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history, with a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showing that roughly 6 in 10 American adults doubt whether he has the memory and mental acuity necessary to serve effectively as president. That’s up slightly from January 2022, when roughly half of those polled expressed a similar view.

Ms. Clinton didn’t address President Biden’s mental or physical fitness for office, just that voters should support him because the alternative—former President Donald Trump—is supposedly a danger to democracy.

“So we have a contest between one candidate who’s old, but who’s done an effective job and doesn’t threaten our democracy,” she said of President Biden.

“And we have another candidate who is old, barely makes sense when he talks, is dangerous, and threatens our democracy,” she said of President Trump, who is 77 years old.

“Pick between your two old ones and figure out how you’re going to save our democracy,” she added.

As evidence for how President Trump is supposedly a threat to democracy, Ms. Clinton pointed to his remarks about wanting to be a “dictator” for one day to address the border crisis and reverse President Biden’s anti-fossil fuel policies, as well as statements he has made about the need to “clean house of all the warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists and the Deep State.”

Biden Mental Fitness In Focus

President Biden’s mental fitness came into question in recent weeks after Special Counsel Robert Hur alleged that, during a two-day investigative interview regarding the president’s handling of classified documents, the octogenarian had multiple lapses of memory.

Mr. Hur said in his investigative report that President Biden couldn’t accurately recall key biographical details about his life, such as the years his term as vice president began and ended while describing him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

While Mr. Hur’s report hinted at the president’s cognitive decline, and even though voters are growing increasingly worried about the commander-in-chief’s mental capability, his physician recently gave him a clean bill of health.

“President Biden is a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” Dr. Kevin O'Connor, the presidential physician, wrote in his written summary of the physical, which probed many aspects of President Biden’s physical health but did not screen him for potential cognitive decline.

Republicans have called for the president’s physical check-up to include a cognitive screening assessment and for the information to be made public, while some of President Biden’s critics have questioned his cognitive health for years.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters recently that there’s no need to subject President Biden to a cognitive test, insisting that he “passes a cognitive test every day ... as he moves from one topic to another, trying, understanding the granular level of these topics.”

(Left) President Joe Biden delivers remarks on canceling student debt at Culver City Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Right) Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump stands on stage during a campaign event at Big League Dreams Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 27, 2024. Mario Tama/Getty Images; David Becker/Getty Images

Meanwhile, polls have shown that if President Biden were to drop out of the race for the White House, Ms. Clinton would be among the Democrats’ top picks for the party’s nomination.

Most of the 2,000-plus respondents to the Harvard-Harris poll, which was carried out in November, said they have doubts about President Biden’s mental fitness to serve as commander-in-chief. The top pick to replace him was Vice President Kamala Harris (24 percent), with Ms. Clinton in second spot with 13 percent.

A more recent poll, carried out by Rasmussen at the end of February, showed that nearly half of Democrat voters think someone else will take President Biden’s place at the last minute, with former first lady Michelle Obama taking top spot among possible replacements, garnering 20 percent support.

Vice President Harris took second spot, with 15 percent support among Democrat voters, while Ms. Clinton was in third place, with 12 percent support.