Former President Ronald Reagan once defused concerns over his age to spin it into hailing his "experience," and now 80-year-old President Joe Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, is trying to do the same as he seeks reelection, too.
"I will not make age an issue of this campaign," Reagan famously said in the 1984 debate at age 73. "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."
Biden is trying the same tactic, NBC News reported, analyzing his latest comments regarding age-old questions hurled at him and increasingly negative polling suggesting he is too old to be reelected.
"I know I don't look that old; I'm a little under 103," Biden joked earlier this month.
Biden has also sarcastically suggested he is 198, 110, 217, 270, or 299, according to the analysis of his public comments.
"Joking about age allows him to simultaneously own the advantages of experience and defuse through humor any doubts about fitness," a former White House official told NBC News.
It could be a response to NBC polling that 68% of registered voters have concerns Biden lacks the mental or physical capacity to serve.
"No president has ever come to the job with more experience, and President Biden has leveraged that experience into a record of accomplishments that few presidents have matched," White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt said in a statement to NBC News.
Notably, Tucker Carlson picked up on the Democrats' concern about Biden's age as they seek to keep hold on the White House in 2024, saying "actually, they should be a little worried."
"But the one thing these people cannot control is aging," Carlson said in his 7th episode of "Tucker on Twitter" on Tuesday night. "Joe Biden is old. He's 80 now. He'll be 85 at the end of the next term.
"People imagine that old age is a long predictable progression from acuity to permanent unconsciousness. But often that is not at all how it actually works.
"When old people start to slide, they tend to slide fast. Joe Biden has begun that descent."
Carlson mocked Biden this week reading the prompter instructions.
"End of quote: You weren't supposed to hear that," Carlson said. "Joe Biden read the stage directions out loud. That's like eating the garnish that comes with your entrée. You're supposed to know not to do that.
"Joe Biden no longer does.
"In a year or two he will be gone completely and there will be no hiding it."