President Trump
Donald John TrumpWhite House sued over lack of sign language interpreters at coronavirus briefings Wife blames Trump, lack of masks for husband's coronavirus death in obit: 'May Karma find you all' Trump authorizes reduced funding for National Guard coronavirus response through 2020 MORE’s reelection campaign launched a series of Facebook ads Thursday questioning Joe Biden
Joe BidenTrump campaign emails supporters encouraging mask-wearing: 'We have nothing to lose' Cuba spells trouble for Bass's VP hopes Democrats want Biden to debate Trump despite risks MORE’s age and fitness for office, expanding on a personal attack line that Republicans have only floated thus far.
The ads asked if the former vice president, 77, is “too old” to be elected president and saying, “geriatric mental health is no laughing matter.”
New Trump Facebook ads go hard at Biden over his age: "Too old?" "Old & out of it"
— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) May 14, 2020
One ad mockingly depicts Biden in what looks like a nursing home needing to be fed ...
What a time to use a nursing home to mock someone pic.twitter.com/uYxy1CbrDv
While Republicans have grumbled about Biden’s age and highlighted verbal gaffes and technical difficulties during his events, the Trump campaign’s ads mark the first time it has used ads to explicitly target his overall fitness.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill regarding the ads.
Trump, who is known to lash out at his opponents in personal terms, has alleged that Biden lacks the mental fitness to lead the country.
“[H]e's not going to be running it,” Trump told supporters at a March rally in North Carolina. “Other people are going to. They're going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country and they're going to be super-left, radical crazies.”
The Trump and Biden campaigns have already begun blitzing each other with negative ads, with many of the attacks focusing on their responses to the coronavirus or stances toward China.
“Donald Trump doesn’t understand. We have an economic crisis because we have a public health crisis. And we have a public health crisis because he refused to act,” a narrator says in the nearly three-minute long clip released this week by the Biden campaign. “Donald Trump didn’t build a great economy. His failure to lead destroyed one.”
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill regarding the latest ads.
The attacks on Biden’s fitness for office come as polls show Trump trailing the former vice president in a number of key battleground states, raising alarms from Republicans over the president’s chances in November.
-Updated May 15 at 9:40 a.m.
