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Joe Biden mocked White House rival Donald Trump’s workload of ‘driving around on his golf cart, filling out his score card before he hits the ball’ as he defended his fitness to beat his Republican rival during a high-stakes solo press conference.
The embattled president sought during the much-watched press conference from a NATO summit Thursday to reassure party colleagues and voters alike that he can take on Trump in the presidential election, arguing that despite recent concerns, he hasn’t dialed back his schedule—though he admitted he does need to “pace” himself.
“If you looked at my schedule since I made that stupid mistake...in the debate I mean, my schedule has been full bore,” the president said. “Where has Trump been, riding around on his golf cart, filling out his score care before he hits the ball? He’s done virtually nothing.”
The president was responding to a question about reported comments he made during a meeting of US governors earlier this month, talking about how he needs more sleep and was seeking to wrap up his public events calendar by 8pm most evenings.
“Instead of my every day starting at 7 and going to bed at midnight, it would be smarter for me to pace myself for a bit,” he said at the press conference on Thursday.
He did admit a few issues with his schedule though, faulting his staff for piling on extra events.
“I love my staff, but they add things, they add things all the time at the very end,” he said. “I’m catching hell from my wife.”
“I always have had an inclination, whether I was playing sports or doing politics, just to keep going, not stop,” he added elsewhere. “I’ve just got to pace myself a little more.”
The press conference was seen as a key chance for the Biden campaign to recover some lost momentum, after a disastrous performance in the first presidential debate set off messy private, then public, discussions within the Democratic party over whether Joe Biden still was mentally and physically sound enough to take on an ascendant Trump campaign.
After the debate, the Biden campaign said the lackluster performance, in which the president sometimes appeared to lose his train of thought or trail off, was the result of exhaustion and a recent “really bad cold.”
“I didn’t have my best night ... I decided to travel around the world a couple of times, going through I don’t know how many time zones – I figure it was about 50 time zones – in the couple of weeks before the debate,” Biden also reportedly said at a private fundraiser in Virginia.
