A Fox News reporter has been accused Sunday of “astroturfing a political attack” by excluding a key point about supposed questions regarding President Joe Biden’s age.
Biden is currently seeking reelection to a second term in the White House, with polls generally showing him neck-and-neck in a general election match-up with former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for 2024, with some recent polls giving Trump the edge. Throughout his term in office, Biden has struggled with low approval ratings in spite of several notable bipartisan achievements, with many prospective voters singling out his advanced age, 81, as a major negative for them.
At 78 years old when he was sworn into office in January 2021, Biden is the oldest individual in United States history ever elected to the presidency. If reelected next year, he would be 86 years old by the time he departed the White House at the end of a second term. His supporters have frequently countered this criticism by noting that Trump is only four years younger, and has, to some, often shown more signs of cognitive decline than Biden.
On Sunday, several reporters called out Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson for claiming that Biden “continues to face questions about his age” while citing as evidence only a question he himself asked the president.
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“While shopping in Nantucket, President Biden was asked by a reporter if he is too old to run for re-election. ‘That’s stupid,’ he replied,” Tomlinson wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, prompting one X user to respond, “If you asked the question why not just say ‘i asked the president’?”
“Amazing: Fox News correspondent [Lucas Tomlinson] reports that Biden ‘continues to face questions about his age, even here in Nantucket’ — citing nothing more than a question [he] himself shouted at Biden on Saturday,” journalist Aaron Rupar wrote, sharing a clip of Tomlinson discussing the matter on Fox News Sunday. “The epitome of astroturfing a political attack.”
Newsweek reached out to Fox News via email for comment.
“A Fox reporter says Biden ‘continues to face questions about his age, even here in Nantucket,'” Brian Stelter, author and former chief media correspondent for CNN, wrote in his own X post. “Then he plays a clip of Biden being asked, ‘Mr. President, are you too old to be running for reelection?’ Without disclosing that the reporter is the one shouting the question.”
The situation even drew a response from Andrew Bates, a deputy press secretary for the Biden administration.
“[Lucas Tomlinson], are you able to speculate on whose voice that is shouting? It sounds familiar to me but I’m having difficulty placing it,” he wrote.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.