President Biden delivered one of the most forceful performances of his campaign on Friday, acknowledging that he no longer “debates as well as he used to,” but galvanizing a crowd of thousands of supporters by angrily accusing former President Donald J. Trump of being a “one-man crime wave.”
Addressing a large and boisterous audience, the 81-year-old Biden sought to push back a chorus of skeptics that had emerged after a blistering debate with Trump the night before, in which he appeared incoherent and unclear.
On Friday, he was once again the fierce and vocal campaigner many had doubted still existed, confronting questions about his age head-on, saying: “I know I’m not a young man, to put it plainly.”
But he tried to minimize concerns about his own fitness for office, saying he would never seek re-election if he didn’t think he was up to the job. And he repeatedly tried to portray the election as a choice between good and evil, morality and crime, an honest man and a convicted criminal.
“I don’t speak as fluently as I used to,” he said to a roar of approval from the crowd in a carnival hangar. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know what’s right and wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.”
