Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume said during a television segment that there was no doubt in his mind that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, 77, was becoming “senile.”
Hume’s remarks came in response to Biden’s outburst on Tuesday when he snapped at a voter who pressed Biden on his extreme anti-Second Amendment agenda.
Biden lashed out, yelling at the man that he was “full of s**t,” and was a “horse’s a*s,” before threatening to “slap” him in the “face.”
“I’ve known him a long time and he can sometimes work himself up into a passion in speeches and so on when he was arguing about issues in a debate, but I don’t remember him exploding at voters like he did in this incident today and hurling profanity the way he did, telling the guy he was full of [s**t],” Hume said. “There’s a number of things that are new about Joe Biden. He’s always tended to make gaffes and if you’ve known him long enough you kind of get used to that and you think they’re kind of funny and they’re just part of who he is and they’re kind of harmless.”
“He’s a genuinely nice guy, I’ve always liked him on a personal basis very much,” Hume continued. “More recently, however, he’s begun to forget things. He didn’t know what state he is in. He couldn’t remember exactly where he was when he met with the Parkland students when he said he was in the White House, it was long after he had been out of the White House and that sort of thing, suggesting that he, like so many his age, is losing his memory and is getting senile.”
“I don’t think there is any doubt about it. I have traces of this myself. I know what it feels like,” Hume continued. “Sometimes you get confused, sometimes you can’t remember what you’re supposed to do the next morning and I’m not running for president and it’s probably a good thing I’m not. And I think that over time, the danger for him and for his party is that he may say something that is so outlandish and so suggestive, that his cognitive faculties have failed him that the Democratic voters will say, oh, my lord, what do we got here?”
Hume concluded, “At the moment, they are so eager to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination and to press forward with someone more familiar that I think this step is lost on Democratic voters. But over time under the pressures of a campaign, who knows what will happen.”
Biden’s episode was apparently was so alarming to top Democrats that House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) told NPR on Tuesday that the DNC should move to cancel the remaining primaries and debates to protect Biden from doing or saying something that would destroy his campaign.
Clyburn told NPR, “I think when the night is over, Joe Biden will be the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, and quite frankly, if the night ends the way it has begun, I think it is time for us to shut this primary down, it is time for us to cancel the rest of these debates — because you don’t do anything but get yourself in trouble if you continue in this contest when it’s obvious that the numbers will not shake out for you.”
Clyburn later added that as the process continues to drag on that Biden will get “himself into trouble” and will say something that he “cannot overcome.”