For the longest time, serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) and his cronies in the Republican party have been going on and on about Joe Biden’s age, mocking him mercilessly. As the site Electoral.vote.com Taegan Goddard writes under the heading “What goes around, comes around” that the time has come when Democrats can turn every one of those attack lines back against SSACFT.
All year, Donald Trump has been harping on the fact that Joe Biden is the oldest president ever and in poor health. And if reelected, Trump decreed, Biden would be well into his 80s and declining. Now that Biden is out of the way, there is renewed scrutiny of Trump’s age and health. Trump is now the oldest presidential candidate in history and has a history of heart disease and obesity. He has not released his bloodwork or other detailed information on his health and people are starting to demand it.
There is no requirement for a candidate to release medical information, but a refusal to do so could cause voters to wonder why. In the case of Trump, Democrats will soon be harping on the fact that he is the oldest candidate in history and not at all transparent about his health. In 2015, Trump’s doctor, Harold Bornstein, released a letter saying that Trump would be the healthiest president ever—even more so than Teddy Roosevelt. Bornstein later revealed that Trump had dictated the entire letter to him, word for word. Bornstein died (of embarrassment?) in 2021.
In 2018, Trump’s then-doctor, Ronny Jackson, noted that Trump’s coronary calcium score was 133, up from 34 in 2009. CNN’s medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, said that a value of 133 meant that Trump had heart disease. Trump also released his weight. At 244 pounds, he is clinically obese. Since then, Trump has not released any medical information. Trump has said he aced cognitive tests, but has not produced any reports from any doctor stating that. Trump also has increased risk of Alzheimer’s, since his father had it and there is a genetic predisposition to it.
And that does not even include SSACFT’s rambling and incoherent speeches and social media posts.
The Democrats may not want to start this line of attack too soon, since it obliquely criticizes Joe Biden as well. But they likely will bring it up at some point.
That SSACFT. has appalling attitudes towards women is well known. You would think that he would pick as a running mate someone who might help smooth out those rough edges to make the ticket more appealing to women. But Jamie Dettmer writes that JD Vance has appallingly retrograde views about women and was thus the wrong pick to be his running mate.
Truth is, if Harris is successful in getting the nod from the Democratic Party, much of the subsequent election campaign is likely to domestically focus on abortion and women’s rights. Trump already has a problem with women voters — polls have consistently shown that the proportion of women planning to vote for him this November is smaller than those who did in 2020. And Vance has nothing to offer Trump on this score — quite the reverse, he risks compounding his boss’s problem.
Presumably, Trump chose Vance as his VP candidate largely to fire up the MAGA base and boost the Republican ticket in Rust Belt states. But that was a choice made when Biden was still heading the Democratic ticket. Now that he’s not, Vance may well become a liability.
Vance’s strict anti-abortion positions of the past, and a string of highly contentious statements he’s made about divorce, implying that women trapped in abusive marriages should remain married for the sake of the kids, aren’t likely to be forgotten. In 2021, he suggested ending marriages that were “maybe even violent” as selfish. “This is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace,” he said. “Making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear.”
He’s also a strict pro-natalist, characterizing those who don’t have kids as “childless cat ladies,” and suggesting that people with children should be given additional votes. He has taken aim at childcare subsidies as “class war against normal people,” despite — or maybe because — such subsidies provide women with young kids more opportunities to work or go to school and be independent.
Furthermore, Vance has only recently moderated his position on abortion to fall into line with Trump, who argues that abortion should be left up to states to decide individually. But in 2022, when he was an Ohio Senate candidate, Vance said on a podcast that he would like to see a national abortion ban with no exceptions — even for rape or incest. That was before Trump’s Supreme Court appointees overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that protected the right to have an abortion. And Vance has even argued that federal action is needed to stop women seeking terminations traveling from states where abortion is illegal to states where it’s allowed.
…When it comes to the women’s vote, especially with young and urban women, Vance only exacerbates Trump’s problem — one that’s only been worsened by the former president’s recent legal cases involving women.
There are so many lines of attack against the Republican ticket. It would be good politics to start hammering them on all of them, so as to keep them on the defensive, especially since the GOP has been flailing around for a clear message ever since Biden dropped out.
not gonna comment on the ageism/ableism angle here, but i do think the real reason trump tapped vance is because he is a celebrity. his name is a brand, which gives them something in common. probably would’ve preferred schwarzenegger or jesse ventura, but i think both of those dudes are on record as opposing trumpism, to some extent or another?
Schwarzenegger was born in Austria, so he’s not eligible to be Vice President.
Vance is a trad Catholic.
Meaning a Catholic fascist.
That is like a whole 5.6% of the US population.
And trad Catholics aren’t well liked by much of the rest of the US population, including other Catholics.
This is forced birthing and female slavery.
If you don’t own and control your own body and aren’t free to move about like the rest of the population, what are you? A slave.
FWIW, being pregnant and giving birth is unpaid work, usually but not always voluntary.
Some women are in fact, paid for being pregnant and giving birth though. It can be a paid job. “The price of US surrogacy ranges from $110,000 to $170,000 for most families.”
We’ve been here before. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act enabled people to reclaim their property even if their slaves had escaped to a free state.
Vance wants to pass a law a lot like this, only for pregnant women.
@2: maybe two decades ago, the Republican party was agitating to get the requirement dropped for the President to be a natural-born citizen, specifically so that they could run Arnold Schwarzenegger as president. Later on, they did run John McCain--a man born in Panama to American citizens--for President. Ted Cruz--born in Canada to a Cuban father and an American-born mother with probable Canadian citizenship at the time he was born--also tried to run. They threw a fit at Obama, born in Hawaii (an American state) to a natural-born American mother (born in Kansas) whose parents (born in Kansas) and grandparents (born in Kansas) were also natural-born American citizens. It’s a mystery why they objected to Obama, isn’t it?
And by the way, where is the proof Donald Trump claimed he uncovered about Obama’s place of birth? Remember, he promised it was going to rock our worlds!
@ raven, 4: it turns out that then-senator Kamala Harris, while serving on the Judiciary Committee at the time Orange Foolius nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, asked him the question: “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” He stumbled and fumbled and made crybaby faces, but he couldn’t answer the question. Later, he cried about her being “mean” to him.
Not behind a payway for me (and I don’t subscribe to the Post): https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/2024/07/22/kamala-harris-brett-kavanaugh/
@ 6: obviously, that should be “paywall” and not “payway”.
As to the atrocity the R’s are proposing that it’s illegal for pregnant women to travel across state lines, lest they go abort: just yesterday I reminded a coworker that a border-guard has no idea why a pregnant woman might be going to cross state lines Does she want to go on vacation with her family? Visit friends in another state? So this is de-facto slavery for women.
“Trump also has increased risk of Alzheimer’s, since his father had it and there is a genetic predisposition to it.”
If he is very, very lucky there may be effective medicines out there in a decade. Created by research, paid for by taxes. Which Republicans hate.
My 70-something friend in Cleveland watches Fox News. He gets the New York Times on Sundays -- so he isn’t aware of what a left-leaning media outlet thinks of her. When asked what he thinks of Kamala, he said he knows nothing about her. Then he started complaining about how Joe Biden was unfairly kicked out of the race. Poor Joe! He was no longer an asset to the Democratic Party so they just kicked him off the ticket! I asked if he had heard Kamala speak. Never! Sadly, old white men are being treated unfairly. They aren’t appreciated anymore!. Would he vote for Kamala? A reluctant yes. He would vote for Biden if he were on the ticket!
If Fox News is trying to disappear Kamala and gain sympathy for old white men, it is doing just that very successfully!
Small correction: Teagan Goddard is the guy who runs politicalwire.com. The site electoral-vote.com you link to is run by Andrew Tannenbaum and Christopher Bates.
@birgerjohansson #8
Unless they have a way to undo the brain damage Alzheimer’s causes, I think it is too late for Trump. Many have noted that his vocabulary is much smaller than it was years ago, and he wasn’t asked to take that cognitive test just for fun. He can’t even remember the name of his primary physician. Also, heart problems often accelerate cognitive decline and his diet has been that of an unsupervised toddler (because that it really what he is) nearly all his life, and surely isn’t going to improve in the future.
Ketil Tveiten @#10,
Thanks for pointing out my error. I have corrected it.
@ 9, the rightwing attack machine and the pro-lifers are now losing their minds that Harris isn’t a “real” mother, just a stepmother. So, the “just have the baby and adopt it out” folks don’t count adoptive parents as “real”.
This satire is looking downright realistic.
“What do voters think about this election?” 🤔🤔🤔 #dailyshow #trump #election
.https://youtube.com/shorts/XJ5TZsaiFQw
Katydid@13:
Let’s be honest here: there’s no consistency or principles in play; the definition of a ‘real’ mother is based entirely on who they want to attack and what they think they can get away with.
This headline from Lawyers, Guns, and Money is amusing: “House Republican leadership engages in doomed effort to make members express marginally less racism about Kamala Harris“. As they say, “Good luck with that.”
What do you think tariffs are?
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs
@15, jenorafeuer, yes, the point is they hate women and are actively working to make them chattel.
John Morales @ 16
I know tariffs are taxes on imports, but the low-information demographic that is the target of Republican propaganda think this is a brilliant move that will avoid costing them money.
Sorta like the “higher tariffs will cure the great depression” argument a century ago.
John Morales @8: #NotAllCisHetWhiteMaleBoomers 😎
Oops, I just noticed that my comment @19 belongs to the “War criminal Benjamin Netanyahu met with protests” post. I’ve added it there, but I’m not sure how to delete it from here. You can ignore it.