WASHINGTON
\nUS President Joe Biden joked about Donald Trump and his own age at an annual media dinner on Saturday \u2014 before unloading deadly serious criticisms of his rival in November\u2019s election.
\n\u201cOne candidate\u2019s too old and mentally unfit to be president,\u201d the 81-year-old Democrat quipped at the Gridiron Club in Washington. \u201cThe other guy\u2019s me.\u201d
\nDemocrat Biden was making his first speech as president at the annual white tie gala for the US media and political elite, an event that Republican former president Trump addressed in 2018.
\nBiden is trailing in a number of polls and faces voters concerns about his age, which he has tried to address by highlighting 77-year-old Trump\u2019s recent verbal slip-ups.
\nIn his remarks, Biden took a swipe at Republicans in Congress who have launched an impeachment inquiry into his son\u2019s business dealings, saying they would \u201crather fail at impeachment than succeed at anything else.\u201d
\nHe added that Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, sitting at the head table with Biden on the eve of St. Patrick\u2019s Day \u201ctook one look at Congress and he asked for another Guinness.\u201d
\nVaradkar and Biden both pushed during a meeting at the White House on Friday for Republicans in Congress to stop blocking military aid for Ukraine to fight Russia\u2019s invasion.
\nBut Biden then returned to Trump, saying that the Democrats\u2019 election campaign would show how they rebuilt the US economy after the Covid-19 pandemic \u201cwithout encouraging the American people to inject bleach.\u201d
\nHe was referring to an incident when Trump, as president, asked a top medical adviser whether virus victims could be injected with disinfectant to cure them.
\n\u201cLook, I wish these were jokes, but they\u2019re not,\u201d added Biden.
\n\u201cDemocracy and freedom are literally under attack. Putin\u2019s on the march in Europe. My predecessor bows down to him and says, \u2018Do whatever the hell you want.\u2019\u201c
\nNoting that Estonia\u2019s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, a strong critic of Russia, was also at his table, he added \u201cWe will not bow down, they will not bow down and I will not bow down.\u201d
\nBiden added that Trump\u2019s false claims to have won the 2020 election, and the January 6 2021 Capitol assault by pro-Trump rioters, showed there was \u201cpoison coursing through the veins of our democracy.\u201d
\nHe also backed journalists whom Trump has repeatedly attacked, adding: \u201cYou are not the enemy of the people. You are a pillar of any free society.\u201d
\nIn his own appearance at the Gridiron Club six years ago, Trump did trade unusually playful digs with the Washington press corps and also joked about North Korea and his own leadership style.
\nThe Gridiron dinner \u2014 held behind closed doors with no photos allowed \u2014 sees Washington\u2019s elite unwind for a night of self-deprecatory humor which includes costumed members performing a song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON US President Joe Biden joked about Donald Trump and his own age at an annual media dinner on Saturday \u2014 before unloading deadly serious criticisms of his rival in November\u2019s election. \u201cOne candidate\u2019s too old and mentally unfit to be president,\u201d the 81-year-old Democrat quipped at the Gridiron Club in Washington. \u201cThe other guy\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":62173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62179,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62166\/revisions\/62179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}