Trump's decline has flown under the radar
By Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos
The dynamic turned up in the Daily
Kos/Civiqs poll in September, with 75% of voters expressing
concern about Biden's age, while just 49% said the same of Trump.
As I have
noted before, part of the differential is simply a product of the
fact that Democratic voters are more willing to question Biden than Republicans
are willing to question Trump.
In the Civiqs survey, only half of Democrats brushed off concerns about Biden's age, while 71% of Republicans dismissed age-related worries about Trump.
But another reason for the
discrepancy in perception is the fact that far fewer Americans have been
confronted with Trump's declining mental acuity. That's partly because Biden
has a press corps that covers his every utterance 24/7 and reporters
have fixated on anything that plays into
voters' perception, so it's a self-reinforcing loop.
Trump, on the other hand, has
typically not drawn as much scrutiny, partly because he isn't surrounded by
reporters every minute of every day and journalists haven't obsessed over
his verbal slips and gaffes in the same way.
Plus, as former Obama White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer notes, Americans who don't follow the news closely also aren't being confronted with the increasing signs of Trump's senility.
Pfeiffer writes in his Message
Box Substack:
"[I]n previous times, individuals who were not actively seeking political news would still come across it inadvertently. Open up Facebook to check in on your nieces or pop on X (formerly Twitter) to see how people are reacting to an NBA trade, and you would almost always see some political news posts. That is no longer the case. Both platforms have tweaked their algorithms to show people less news—specifically, less political news.
According to an Axios report
based on data from Similarweb, referrals to news sites from
Facebook and X have plummeted since Trump left office.
Trump's miscues, however, are
beginning to attract increased attention—so much so that Fox News hosts
recently attempted to paper over the fact that Trump cannot seem
to remember Biden is president, not Barack Obama.
On Sunday, Fox News personality Brian
Kilmeade tried to pass off Trump's inability to remember Biden's name as an
intentional effort to imply that Obama is "pulling the strings"
behind the scenes.
"He's convinced Barack Obama is
running the country—that's why he says it. He wants you to think that,"
Kilmeade explained.
As if that rationale is a ringing
endorsement of Trump's keen insight.
Even the unnamed woman appearing in
the same Fox segment retorted, "Oh Brian, c'mon."
While voters' concerns about Biden's
age won't disappear overnight, a
recent push by Team Biden along with Trump's rivals on the
campaign trail is starting to take hold with reporters.