Swalwell on Biden age: ‘I’ll take the guy who’s 81 over the guy who has 91 felony counts’

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) went after former President Trump for his legal woes in an interview on MSNBC Saturday.

“I’ll take the individual who’s 81 over the guy who has 91 felony counts,” Swalwell said, making a reference to President Biden’s age in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show” on Saturday.

“It’s not about two individuals,” Swalwell continued, speaking about the 2024 election. “It’s about the idea of competence versus chaos, or even greater, freedom versus fascism. If we make it about those ideas, and what they mean in our daily lives, we’re gonna win.”

Swalwell’s comments come after Trump was ordered to pay almost $355 million in penalties in a civil fraud case and amid increased scrutiny faced by the president on his age and memory in the wake of a special counsel report on Biden’s handling of classified documents. The report noted that Biden had problems with memory and recall.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” special counsel Robert Hur wrote in the report.

Ezra Klein, a columnist and podcast host for The New York Times, made an argument that Biden should stop running for reelection due to the scrutiny the president is facing over his age and memory Friday on his podcast “The Ezra Klein Show.”

“To say this is a media invention, that people are worried about Biden’s age because the media keeps telling them to be worried about Biden’s age?” Klein said.

“If you’ve really convinced yourself of that, in your heart of hearts, I almost don’t know what to tell you,” he added. “In poll after poll, 70 percent to 80 percent of voters are worried about his age. This is not a thing people need the media to see.”

A recent poll, conducted in the wake of the report, found that 86 percent of Americans think he is too old for office.

Trump still faces several other legal challenges heading into the 2024 election season, including in the ongoing Georgia probe.