THE MEDIA EFFORT TO BIDENIZE TRUMP. President Joe Biden’s two biggest liabilities were his senility and the damaging inflation his administration helped create. Now, some media commentators are trying to convince Americans that President Donald Trump has the same liabilities.
On the topic of senility, in recent weeks, the president’s adversaries have tried to argue that the 79-year-old Trump is suffering from the infirmities that were so obvious in Biden by the same age. Last month, the New York Times published a much-discussed article, “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office.” The article said, “Mr. Trump, 79, is the oldest person to be elected to the presidency, and he is aging.”
Trump is clearly an immensely more energetic man than Biden was. But the New York Times suggested that it is just an image that Trump and the White House try to project. “Nearly a year into his second term,” reporters Katie Rogers and Dylan Freedman wrote, “Americans see Mr. Trump less than they used to, according to a New York Times analysis of his schedule. Mr. Trump has fewer public events on his schedule … He also keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m., on average. And when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear.”
The framing of the story was similar to earlier reporting on Biden’s senescence, at least the reporting that got through the media’s self-censorship of coverage of the Biden problem. If Trump appears to nod off at a long White House event, it’s just like Biden! The New York Times went through a list of particulars familiar to readers of left-wing social media: Trump’s MRI, the bruise on his right hand, speculation about whether Trump takes a weight-loss drug, and more. The New York Times also suggested that, during a period of intense foreign-policy work by the president, Trump “is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips.”
That’s a reach. Trump is doing more of the more punishing travel, and less of the less punishing travel, and that shows he is slowing down? Non sequiturs aside, the point of the New York Times piece was clear: Trump is like Biden. It’s an astonishing position to take, given that so many in the press covered up Biden’s condition, but there it is.
On the issue of inflation, the president’s adversaries are now arguing that Trump, during whose brief term inflation has gone from 3% year-over-year in January 2025 to 2.7% year-over-year in November, is making the same mistake as Biden, during whose term inflation went from 1.4% year-over-year in January 2021 to 9.1% year-over-year in June 2022. The reasoning is that Biden tried to downplay inflation, and now Trump is trying to downplay inflation.
One could argue that downplaying 9.1% inflation is substantially different from downplaying 2.7% inflation. One could additionally argue that voters can see it is substantially different. But equating the two is necessary to suggest that Trump is recreating Biden’s problems, so some in the press do it.
So how do you combine the senility and inflation issues into a general Trump-is-Biden theory? Consider this, from New York Times podcast host and former National Public Radio reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro on CNN Thursday, commenting on the president’s economic speech. “This is not Trump 2.0,” Garcia-Navarro said. “This looks like Biden 2.0, because not only are we seeing the president making the same mistakes … but this is a weakened leader. He is aging … He sounds like an aging man who is angry. And whatever vitality and ability he had to connect with people looks to be very, very quickly dissipating. And so, what you’re seeing, I think, is a replay of what happened to Joe Biden happening to Donald Trump.”
BYRON YORK: TRUMP’S ECONOMIC CAMPAIGN
Do you think that is what you are seeing? It is hard to imagine two presidencies being more different than Trump’s and Biden’s. Yet now, some in the opposing party, apparently still stung by the disastrous end of the Biden presidency, see a political advantage in trying to convince voters that Trump is somehow a repeat of Biden. That is particularly strange, given that from 2021 to 2025, some of these same people were defending Biden against the accurate charges that he was too infirm to be president and that his policies made inflation worse.
Of course, Trump-is-Biden is just one small part of the resistance to Trump. It’s nothing compared to the investment many in the press have made in alleging that Trump was somehow involved in the crimes of the dead convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It’s nothing compared to the Russia allegation that dominated much of Trump’s first term. Perhaps it’s a way for some media figures to unburden themselves of the embarrassment they feel for covering up Biden’s disabilities, and to take a poke at Trump at the same time. In any event, you’re likely to hear more of it.