Trump’s campaign is making up fake debate excuses in advance. Sound familiar?

Shortly after former vice president Joe Biden clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 2020 presidential race, President Trump and his allies invested heavily in a particular line of argument. Biden was old and enfeebled, they asserted, and could barely function physically or intellectually.

Over and over, they made this argument, even releasing ads compiling snippets of Biden stumbling over words. There was no small irony to attacking Biden as old or prone to misstatements, of course, but it was the strategy they dropped like a blanket over the political conversation.