Biden struggles with Covid optics

First lady Jill Biden, who received the Covid-19 vaccine and boosters, has tested positive for the virus again. President Joe Biden, while presently unafflicted, is instead battling dismal approval ratings. A Wall Street Journal poll this week found that “voters overwhelmingly think President Biden is too old to run for re-election and give him low marks for handling the economy and other issues important to their vote…”Similarly, an Associated Press-NORC poll released last month found “fully 77 percent said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. Not only do 89 percent of Republicans say that, so do 69…

First lady Jill Biden, who received the Covid-19 vaccine and boosters, has tested positive for the virus again. President Joe Biden, while presently unafflicted, is instead battling dismal approval ratings.

A Wall Street Journal poll this week found that “voters overwhelmingly think President Biden is too old to run for re-election and give him low marks for handling the economy and other issues important to their vote…”

Similarly, an Associated Press-NORC poll released last month found “fully 77 percent said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. Not only do 89 percent of Republicans say that, so do 69 percent of Democrats.”

The octogenarian commander-in-chief has had his fair share of showing-his-age incidents of late — tripping and falling, repeatedly mixing up names and titles, wandering off — and the optics of an already-confused and frail-looking president sporting a mask to protect him from a disease that disproportionately affects old people certainly won’t help his aged image — especially as he declared the pandemic “over” this May.

Biden appears to be hedging his bets between cautious, conscientious Covid complier and young, fit, healthy president. “To mask or not to mask? Biden goes both ways after first lady tests positive for Covid-19,” reports the AP.

–Teresa Mull

On our radar

MAKE ’EM PROUD Enrique Tarrio, head of the all-male far right group the Proud Boys, was sentenced to twenty-two years prison for his role in planning and inspiring the January 6 Capitol riot. Tarrio was not in DC on the day itself.

THIS AGAIN? Tucker Carlson is teasing a bombshell interview on X/Twitter this evening with Larry Sinclair, a man who has since 2008 been claiming that he did cocaine and had sexual relations with former president Barack Obama.

CARROLL SERVICE Donald Trump has been found liable of defaming E. Jean Carroll in a second case. Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that a jury — set to convene in January — need only decide the amount Trump will have to pay out to Carroll.

WHAT’S UP, DOC? Kentucky senator Rand Paul has cast doubt on the dehydration diagnosis given by Capitol doctors to explain his senior senator Mitch McConnell’s recent episodes. “It’s not a valid medical diagnosis for people to say that’s dehydration,” Paul, a qualified ophthalmologist, told reporters.

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By George

Georgetown University was ranked in the bottom five schools on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s 2024 college free speech rankings. The annual list rates schools based on students’ willingness to express ideas, how often speakers are shouted down, university speech codes and other metrics related to open inquiry and free speech. The oldest Catholic school in the country was dinged because only 18 percent of students say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is never acceptable, and because of its strict speech code. Alumni of the university might recall that the only designated unrestricted speech zone on campus is the ironically named “Red Square.”

–Amber Athey

Marked man

Donald Trump expressed a desire to debate Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, during an interview with Hugh Hewitt, saying that he “didn’t like the way she dealt with the Queen.”

“I’d love to debate her. I would love it,” he told the radio host. Trump has thus far not committed to attend any primary debates with his Republican opponents — with the second one scheduled for Wednesday September 27 in Sima Valley, California. At the first in Milwaukee, his surrogates gave me conflicting answers when I asked them about the likelihood of seeing him in a GOP debate.

Clearly Markle offers a much more intriguing match-up…

–Matt McDonald