Bernie Sanders downplays Joe Biden’s age: ‘Seemed fine’

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday downplayed fellow octogenarian President Biden’s age, recalling a recent meeting in which the 80-year-old commander-in-chief “seemed fine.”

“I met with the president, I don’t know five or six weeks ago. We had a great discussion. He seemed fine to me,” Sanders told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

Sanders, 81, rattled off a host of issues, such as abortion, climate change, the minimum wage, reforming the pharmaceutical industry and more that he believes voters will consider strongly in the 2024 presidential election.

“When people look at a candidate, whether it’s Joe Biden or Trump or Bernie Sanders, anybody else, they have to evaluate a whole lot of factors,” he said.

Thirty-seven percent of Democratic and Independent voters indicated that Biden’s age makes them less likely to back him, while 56% said it didn’t make a difference, according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll from June.

Biden has long grappled with questions about his age.

At 80, he is already the oldest president in history. He will be 82 at the start of a second term, should he win re-election, and 86 by its conclusion.

“It doesn’t register with me,” Biden told reporters about his age back in April. “But the only thing I can say is that one of the things that people are going to find out is, they’re going to see a race, and they are going to judge whether or not I have it or don’t have it.”

But the president has also acknowledged that his age is a “legitimate concern.”

Many conservative critics have pointed to a string of gaffes on his part, such as suggesting his administration has plans to construct “railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.”

Last year, during a conference, he called out for the late Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), who had died in a car crash.

So far, the 2024 Republican frontrunner is former President Donald Trump, who is 77. Biden retains a 1.4% edge over Trump in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate.

Sanders, who ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, which Biden won, recently delivered a policy speech in New Hampshire. He prodded the Democrats to tack to the left in the upcoming election.

“Biden has every right to be proud of a long series of accomplishments. The point of my remarks is that you cannot simply as president of the United States, rest on your laurels,” Sanders said Sunday.

“My message yesterday for the Democrats, not just for the president, is if you want to do well in this election, talk to the needs of the American people,” he continued, “have the guts to take on the big money.”