Putin Was Taken Aback at How Fit Biden Was During Their Last Meeting — Book

There will be ample debate over the age and physical/mental well-being of President Joe Biden in the coming months, up to Election Day 2024. With three-quarters of Americans viewing Biden as "too old" to lead, the issue is one he'll have to eventually confront.

But at least one world leader believes Biden is more fit than the media (particularly on the right) makes him out to be: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

From Business Insider:

The Russian press had spent months portraying Biden as a fragile old man, a piece of spin that Putin had internalized. But when he greeted Biden, he seemed taken aback by his appearance. 'You look good,' he exclaimed," journalist Franklin Foer wrote in The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future, which was published on Tuesday. 

Putin, Foer wrote, was so struck by the fact that Scranton Joe wasn't scrawny that he had to tell then-outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel about it.

Not that the opinions of a brutalistic authoritarian leader matter or anything. In fact, in most cases, their opinions should be dismissed as only serving their own selfish interests. 

But this is an interesting thing to take note of, strictly from the "Biden is too old/weak to lead" argument that is constantly emanating from the far right (which has taken a strong liking to Putin, under Trump's direction, in recent years). 

Age ultimately doesn't matter, in the grand scheme of things, so long as the president makes the right choices and isn't disrupted from being able to serve on account of how old they are. Whether that's true for Biden or not will be up for voters to decide.

However, the 2024 presidential election will be about more than that, and will primarily focus on who Americans see as a better potential leader overall. Since it will likely come down to picking between Biden or Trump, on that measure, the person most likely to keep our democratic institutions intact — preventing the other person, who actually admires the authoritarian Putin, from taking office — is the better choice.

Russia Presidential Press and Information Office/Wikimedia (CC BY 4.0)