In a video response to Biden mocking his age, Trump insists he knows his wife’s name and acts confused only for “comedic reasons.”
During his appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers earlier this week, President Joe Biden tried to defuse the chatter about him being too old to serve another term by noting that his likely opponent, Donald Trump, is also old — and even less coherent. “You got to take a look at the other guy,” Biden said. “He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name.”
It’s a good quip, but it’s also based on something that didn’t actually happen. On Saturday, Trump responded to a CPAC crowd clapping for his wife by saying, “Wow, Mercedes, that’s pretty good!” People mistakenly thought he was calling Melania by the wrong name, but it’s now clear that he was actually addressing his former adviser Mercedes Schlapp, who was in the audience.
Trump makes tons of bizarre and incoherent statements. So, as I asked on Tuesday, why build a joke around a claim that is actually fake news?
Now we have the answer: Because it set Trump off — with hilarious results.
Both Schlapp and Trump spokesman Steven Cheung had already said the CPAC clip was taken out of context, so there was really no reason for the former president to personally respond to the story. But, of course, he couldn’t help himself. Rather than playing it cool, Trump showed he’s still stewing about Biden’s joke by posting a Truth Social video that comes off like a live-action “Old Man Yells at Cloud” meme:
The Radical Left Democrats are at it again… pic.twitter.com/uPqOjljW9O
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) February 29, 2024
Trump said (after hurling some standard Biden insults):
He went on a very poorly rated show last night, and he talked about Donald Trump and his wife — I don’t know the name of my wife. He was referring to the fact that at CPAC, where I had a sold-out speech, the biggest audience they’ve had in years, I think maybe ever, I made the statement that Melania was very popular, because when I mentioned her name, the audience went wild. I then looked at the two people, man and wife, Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, and I said “Wow, they really like the First Lady.” So this got taken as the fact that I thought Mercedes was the First Lady. It has nothing to do with that.
Got it — super-concise and clear. But isn’t it true that Trump sometimes gets confused during rallies and interviews, like how he keeps saying Barack Obama when he means Biden? Well, he had an answer for that, too:
These people are really dishonest. They are absolutely something. They have a horrible candidate who’s a horrible president. They make up things constantly. You take a look at when I use Barack Hussein Obama and I interject him into where it’s supposed to be Biden and I do it purposely for comedic reasons and for sarcasm — because a lot of people say that Obama’s running the country, not Biden, because he’s sleeping all the time. They say, “Oh, I don’t know the name of the president.”
Or when I imitate this guy getting off a stage, what they do is they say, “Oh, he had trouble getting off a stage.” I have no trouble getting off a stage. Anybody that watches what I do at rallies would say, “Wow, that’s amazing! He can go two hours without a teleprompter, not making even a little mistake.” Very few people, maybe almost nobody, can do what I do.
Sure, I often think, Wow, that’s amazing!, while watching Trump rallies, but it’s usually because I’m marveling at him saying something like magnets don’t work underwater. And I don’t think Trump is doing some kind of elaborate performance art when he takes his time descending staircases and refers to the current president as Obama (though it’s true that he has been pushing an unhinged “Obama is running the White House” conspiracy theory).
But you can judge for yourself. The Biden campaign helpfully compiled footage of some of these incidents in an X post mocking Trump for his video meltdown:
Donald, man. Check the tape. pic.twitter.com/PwXb9iqP4j
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 29, 2024
The Biden-campaign video starts with the misleading CPAC “Mercedes” clip, which at this point must be an intentional (if dishonest) choice. Doubling down seems like a bad move to me, but it may be part of Biden’s campaign strategy. In January, CNN reported that the president is purposely taunting Trump to get a rise out of him — and it’s working.
“I do think he’s trying to get under his skin, and I think it’s the smartest thing the Biden campaign has done yet,” a person close to Trump said. “It rattles him and takes him off message.”
So it seems the 2024 election is going to be all about two old guys yelling at each other about who’s more decrepit. At least we’ll get some amusing tirades along the way.
