The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Trump is trying to turn Biden’s gaffes into a major liability

August 13, 2019 at 6:08 p.m. EDT
The Washington Post’s Matt Viser analyzes a string of recent gaffes by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and what they might mean in 2020. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Joe Biden’s verbal miscues have always been part of his charm, baked into his reputation as a plain-spoken politician who delivers impossible-to-diagram sentences and whose rhetorical flourishes can quickly veer off course.

But now, that habit is colliding with a much more damaging narrative pushed aggressively by President Trump and nagging at some of Biden’s fellow Democrats: that he is a man past his prime.