Senators from both parties weigh in on Nikki Haley’s unsubtle attack on the Democratic president and the GOP 2024 front-runner.
Senators from both parties weigh in on Nikki Haley’s unsubtle attack on the Democratic president and the GOP 2024 front-runner.
I n a speech launching her presidential campaign on Wednesday, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the U.N., launched a not-very-subtle attack against President Biden and former president Donald Trump.
Calling for a new generation of leadership, Haley, age 51, said it was time “to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past.” Haley added that if she is elected president, there will be “term limits for Congress and mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.” If reelected in 2024, Biden, now 80, would turn 86 during his final year in office; Trump, now 76, would turn 82 that year.
On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Texas GOP senator Ted Cruz, the runner-up in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, leaned into Haley’s attack on Biden’s age but dodged when asked if Trump is too old to serve another term in the White House.
“Biden’s too old to serve his current term,” Cruz told National Review. “Biden, sadly, is in the midst of serious mental decline. The Joe Biden [of] today is not the same guy that so many of us knew a decade ago. And he’s not up to the job.”
Asked directly if Trump is too old to serve another term as president, Cruz didn’t directly answer one way or the other. “That’s a decision that’s going to be made by voters,” he said.
“As for the Republican side, it’s gonna be an interesting year. It’s gonna be a wild, wooly race. Those two won’t be the only candidates in the field. And I expect the Republican Party will have a vigorous debate over the next year about the right direction to go,” said Cruz, who reiterated his commitment to run for another term in the U.S. Senate in 2024 rather than take another shot at the White House.
Asked about Trump’s bid for another term in the White House, Indiana GOP senator Todd Young told National Review: “I think people are ready for a new leader, period.”
Young said he thought it was “superficial” to focus simply on a candidate’s age, but he called for “fresh thinking” and added: “I think a lot of Ambassador Haley, and I had an opportunity to work with her when she was U.N. ambassador, and she was outstanding, and I’m a fan.” Young hasn’t made a decision about whom he’ll endorse in 2024 but noted that another Indiana Republican, former vice president Mike Pence, might announce his own bid soon.
Another significant, nonideological line of attack for Trump’s Republican rivals — one missing from Haley’s speech — is the fact that Trump would enter another term in the White House as a lame duck, constitutionally forbidden from running for reelection in 2028. Wisconsin GOP senator Ron Johnson said he won’t endorse in the primary and will support whoever the 2024 nominee is, but he said of Trump’s lame-duck status: “That’s certainly one of the factors that voters will take into consideration.”
Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported on Thursday that many Democrats privately are concerned that Biden is too old to serve another term. But on Wednesday, Democrats on Capitol Hill rallied behind Biden and publicly said they have no concerns that an 85-year-old Biden could serve effectively as commander in chief.
Democratic senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a longtime Biden ally, said of Haley’s jab at Biden’s age: “I don’t think [President Biden] needs to respond to that argument. I think his strong record of leadership over the last two years [and] his forceful, agile, very capable State of the Union speech more than answers that question or concern.”
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon also pointed to Biden’s State of the Union response as a strong rebuttal to the case that he’s too old to serve another term. “The argument is what you saw at the State of the Union. You saw somebody who was, you know, he was coming to play, and he was on point, showing energy — a positive kind of energy.” Of course, an 80-year-old president’s performance in a set speech with all the pomp and circumstance of the State of the Union may not be a good test of how he would perform 18 months from now on the campaign trail, or five years from now in the Oval Office.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said she has no doubt that Biden will seek another term, and when asked if there’s some age at which a person is too old to be commander in chief, she said: “The question is who’s got the ideas and who’s got the fight in them to make it happen. Right now, it is clear that President Biden has led our nation to do more over the last two years to help working people across this country than has been done in any two-year period in decades and decades.”
As for Nikki Haley’s proposed test for elderly politicians, Warren said: “If that’s the best idea she’s got to run on, she’s in real trouble.” Haley’s launch speech also focused heavily on foreign policy — from the threat of Communist China and Russia to the loss of Afghanistan (another issue on which Trump is implicated). But it was Haley’s obvious attack on the GOP front-runner that drew the most attention.