President Biden’s exit from the 2024 race means former President Trump will be the oldest nominee in U.S. history, a fact not lost on Democrats looking to turn the age question around on Republicans.
“This will probably boil down to Donald Trump, who is the oldest nominee in history, against Kamala Harris,” Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., said in reaction to the news that Biden was dropping out of the race, according to a report in The Associated Press.
Maxwell’s comments come as the race for the White House was thrown into chaos Sunday by Biden’s announcement that he was stepping aside, arguing in a statement posted to social media that he made the decision “in the best interest of my party and the country.”
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Former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. (Getty Images)
Concerns over what was in the best interest of the party and the country mostly focused around Biden’s age and mental acuity, an issue that became even more prominent after the president’s disastrous debate performance at the beginning of the month. Calls for Biden, who would be 82 by inauguration day, to drop out of the race continued to intensify in the weeks after the debate, finally leading to his decision to step aside Sunday.
That decision makes Trump, 78, the oldest nominee in history, opening up the new line of attack from Democrats.
“Donald Trump is too old to be President,” Democratic Ohio State Rep. Casey Weinstein posted on X in reaction to the news that Trump was now the oldest ever nominee.
President Biden speaks during a campaign event at the Martin Luther King Recreation Center in Philadelphia on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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“The man is nearly 80-years-old and so the question is, can he serve another four years? I’m not sure he can,” former South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers, a Democrat, told CNN.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden endorsed to top the ticket after dropping out, also plans to attack Trump’s age if she eventually does become the nominee, according to a report from the Telegraph, citing the vice president’s deputy chief of staff.
The report also added that Erin Wilson, a West Wing veteran, hinted at a similar strategy, saying in a call with the group “Win With Black Woman” that Harris would make “the issue of age and fitness a liability for Trump.”
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally on June 28, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“Her role as a prosecutor makes her the ultimate contrast to Trump, the convicted felon,” Wilson reportedly said on the call.
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When reached for comment by Fox News Digital, Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said that the “American people are rightly concerned that the Republican Party has nominated Donald Trump, a 78-year-old convicted criminal,” adding that Trump “has spent decades screwing over working people and now wants to destroy our democracy, ban abortion, and only cares about himself.”
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