Republicans ridicule Biden for edited debate video and doubt readiness to confront Trump

Republican lawmakers are calling into question President Joe Biden’s mental acuity after he accepted an invitation to debate former President Donald Trump, suggesting the incumbent president will be unable to form coherent arguments on stage in front of an audience.

Biden challenged Trump to accept the debates in a video posted on X on Wednesday morning, claiming the former president “lost two debates to me” when they first ran against each other in 2020. However, many Republicans ripped into the 14-second video for its edits, which critics say prove Biden won’t be able to perform in a high-stakes debate.

“Biden’s video has 5 cuts in 13 seconds,” Sen Josh Hawley (R-MO) said in a post on X. “What will Biden do in a debate when his many handlers can’t edit and splice his sentences together[?]”

The Trump campaign also criticized the video, calling it a “total disaster.”

“In a super short 14 second video, the Biden campaign needed to do 5 jump cuts because Crooked Joe couldn’t deliver a clean reading,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a post on X.

Both Biden and Trump accepted an invitation from CNN to appear for a debate on June 27, marking the first debate of the general election cycle. The debate comes after Biden’s campaign came out on Wednesday morning to say they would debate Trump at least twice before the November election, although noting the president would not participate in debates sponsored by the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates.

Instead, Biden said he would participate in debates hosted by news organizations, arguing the commission failed to enforce rules for candidates during the 2020 debates that resulted in the candidates repeatedly talking over each other.

Trump quickly accepted Biden’s challenge, setting the stage for what could be another contentious showdown between the two candidates.

“Crooked Joe Biden is the worst debater I have ever faced – he can’t put two sentences together,” Trump told Fox News. “Crooked is also the worst president in the history of the United States, by far.”

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Trump has repeatedly attacked his opponent over his age and mental acuity, claiming Biden, who is the oldest president, in U.S. history is not fit to hold office. That attack has also been used by a number of Republican lawmakers as they campaign on Trump’s behalf.

The Biden campaign has pushed back on those attacks, even going so far as to embrace his age as a way to prove his political experience. The Washington Examiner contacted a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign for comment.