MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” noted on Friday that with Kamala Harris as his opponent, Donald Trump’s weaknesses have become a lot more obvious, declaring the 78-year-old has demonstrated “complete failings of his political instincts.”
The segment kicked off by discussing a new Wall Street Journal column from Peggy Noonan, which noted that with Joe Biden no longer his opponent, Trump’s age has become a glaring issue.
Noonan wrote in part, “He is 78. He hasn’t been able to focus, make his case. Is he, in another irony of 2024, turning into Joe Biden?” After reading that verbatim, co-host Joe Scarborough said, “and the split screens have not been good for him at all this week. You look at the polls, and you can read these polls that are coming in. It is only August, but there certainly is momentum.”
Scarborough added that it is “something that we haven’t seen from Donald Trump since 2016… the complete failings of his political instincts to rise to a moment.”
“Well, I think you’re seeing fear,” John Heilemann chimed in.
Heilemann added that there was a lot of discussion about Trump’s age when Joe Biden was still in the race, but “there’s a double standard here,” he said.
“The press is terrible at focusing on two things at the same time,” Heilemann, noting that the media was only concerned about Biden’s age when he remained in the race.
“Trump’s failings in this area got ignored,” Heilemann continued. “Even though we on many occasions on this show would point to various Trump mental failures.”
However, now that Biden stepped aside, “It’s much more glaring to people, how many failures, cognitive failures, Donald Trump has, especially when he stands in an unscripted way in front of the press,” Heilemann said.
“The split screen now is a split screen that is much more punishing to Donald Trump than the split screen when it was Joe Biden on the other side,” Heilemann added.
