GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley says President Biden would likely die within five years if re-elected — warning his supporters they’d have to contend with Kamala Harris in the Oval Office.
Haley doubled-down on criticism of Biden’s decision to run again after the 80-year-old — the oldest president in the nation’s history — announced his re-election campaign Tuesday.
“I think that we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden you really are counting on a President Harris, because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely,” Haley, 51, told Fox News.
Haley has previously argued candidates over 75 should take cognitive tests — a move that would also affect current GOP front-runner Donald Trump, 76.
Biden, however, doesn’t see his age as an issue despite attacks from the right, declaring he’s his party’s best candidate against Trump.
“I can’t even say — I guess, how old I am. I can’t even say the number,” Biden told reporters Tuesday.
“It doesn’t — it doesn’t register with me. …I took a hard look at it before I decided to run. And I feel good.” he said.
Though Biden is trying to make his age a nonissue, critics have pointed to gaffes during his presidency as a sign of declining mental health.
On Tuesday, for example, he incorrectly said his grandfather died two weeks before Biden was born at the same hospital. Instead, his father’s father, Joseph H. Biden, died in 1941 in Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital — more than a year before Biden was born at a Scranton, Pa., hospital.
Concern about Biden’s mental fitness peaked last September when he asked “Where’s Jackie?” and searched for the late Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) at an event — despite publicly mourning her death in a car crash and calling her family to offer his condolences in August.
Haley has been among the many Republicans calling attention to Biden’s gaffes, touting herself as part of a “new generation” of US leadership.
The former American ambassador to the United Nations, however, continues to trail in the polls behind Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has yet to declare his intent to run in 2024.
The oldest US president upon leaving office was Ronald Reagan, who was 77 when he completed his second term in January 1989. Biden will now have that record whether or not he wins re-election.
