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news
Joe Biden Fox News.PNGFox News pundit slams Joe Biden bike ride – but ignores the hundreds of golfing trips Donald Trump took in office
“Cycling is the new golf” is hardly a new cliché – but no-one seems to have told a Fox News pundit who questioned President Joe Biden’s fitness for office after he was filmed (not for the first time) riding a bicycle on a break in Delaware while making no reference to the hundreds of visits to golf courses his predecessor President Donald Trump made during his four years in the White House.
In an interview with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner, former reality TV star Rachel Campos-Duffy, whose husband is a former Republican Congressman, claimed that footage of Biden on a bike ride with his wife Jill on Sunday at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware – their home state – somehow proved that he is unable to fulfil the demands of his office.
“Being the leader of the free world has to be the most demanding job in the whole world and he simply does not have the mental or physical stamina to do this job,” she insisted.
“That is why his handlers and his wife, who by the way look increasingly like visiting angels, have to schedule in these senior breaks for him so he can take naps and go for bike rides because he can't concentrate on the job the way he should,” Mrs Campos-Duffy continued.
“I mean, just compare it to President Donald Trump,” she said, ignoring the more than 300 times that Trump is believed to have visited golf courses while in office, and in a reference to criticism of Biden not holding official press conferences, insisted that the former president “worked these long, long hours and had impromptu hour-long pressers with the media.”
It has been estimated that Trump spent nearly one in three of his days as president at one or more of the resorts he owns, and while Rehoboth Beach where Biden spent the weekend lies 120 miles east of Washington DC, his predecessor’s favoured destination was his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, 1,000 miles from the White House.
His golfing trips were heavily criticised by many media outlets not only because of the perception that he was not devoting his full energies to his office, but also because of the associated Security Service costs, which are believed to have run to tens of millions of dollars.
Trump himself – who in 1989 and 1990 sponsored a multi-day international race in the eastern US modestly called the Tour de Trump – was dismissive of Biden’s penchant for cycling in the run-up to the 2020 Presidential Election.
In a speech in August last year shortly after footage emerged of his rival out on a bike ride, Trump said: “I’ll never be riding a bicycle. I’m not getting hurt riding a bicycle.”
Previously, he had repeatedly attempted to belittle former Secretary of State John Kerry who in 2015 broke his leg when he crashed while riding his bike on the Grand Colombière in the French Alps while on a break from talks in Switzerland regarding Iran’s nuclear capability.
> John Kerry returns to conquer Col de la Colombière where he broke his leg
Later that year Trump – who as president would, in 2018, rip up the Iran deal Kerry negotiated – said of Kerry, “He goes into a bicycle race at 73 or 74 years old. He falls, breaks his leg. I don’t want him on a bicycle during nuclear negotiations.”
Kerry was in fact 71 at the time and was not riding in a race.
Trump added: “I swear to you, I will never enter a bicycle race if I’m president.”
Golf, however, turned out to be a different matter entirely.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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51 comments
Most of the time I avoid Road CC so I'm not bombarded with its crass lefty politics. I thought it was something to do with cycling, but it's just another page of The Guardian.
I see you've avoided it for (at time of writing) 15 posts Janet. Please don't let us detain you further....
Even when it is demonstrably much less crass than the raving right politics.
I read the Mail and the Guardian - they're both absolutely awful in places but balance is the key!
I (sort of) agree with planetjane although I would prefer this site to be apolitical and have none of the sometimes extremely partisan comments we get on here.
The Guardian can only be described as left wing in comparison with most of the msm in the UK, which demonstrates how far right this country has moved since WW2. In socialist countries it would be middle of the road.
Does the Mail have a bike blog?
I have no idea but maybe there might be someone here who could offer to help them out? Even with all the hard-left types here there must be one or two who could bring themselves to...
It's difficult to know how a site dedicated to cycling on the road can be apolitical. Road and general transport policy is central to road cycling safety and it's very existence. As politics is the formulation of policy I don't believe they can be parsed.
Kiwi fruit
If you can get over your "Trump derangement syndrome " for just a second , you. might read the point of Fox news's discussion.
All credit to all who ride bikes, especially our politicians.... Kerry , Biden , and Bush , and others. The point is that Biden ( and Harris) is usually absent and silent , often vacationing or riding bikes , while multiple major crises ( by his own creation ) ravage this country. Regardless of your opinion on President Trump , who over half the country feel was one of the best presidents , it is getting pretty obvious to many other world leaders that Joe Biden is not mentally or physically competent for the job at hand. Riding a bike... probably ... but definitely not managing the worlds superpower.
Whether or not Biden is mentally or physically competent, at least he isn't bat-shit insane and getting people to inject bleach. I really can't take Fox news seriously as they seem to just spout rhetoric for really stupid people and have a divisive agenda. Get the "left" (the left in the U.S. is more like centre right elsewhere) to attack the right and vice versa and ignore that it's rich against poor and always has been.
Physically -
One jogs and rides bikes to stay reasonably fit.
One rides around in buggies to walk 2 metres to hit a ball before getting back in the buggy.
Mentally - Both forget names, both slip up on words. One angrily tweets his thoughts at 3am when geting up during the night to pee or watching news items when "working" and thinks windmill noises causes cancer. Still one proved his mental capacity live on air by listing five random words several times. The words being person, woman, man, camera, TV. Such random words and shows a mental acumen not shown by someone being interviewed by a person who happens to be a woman filmed by a man operating a camera for TV, Yep mentally ........
I remember seeing a graph showing that Trump's tweets corresponded strongly with broadcasts of Fox News i.e. he'd watch Fox News and then post something related. (Just looked it up and found it here: https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/study-two-years-trumps-live-tweeting-obsession-numbers)
I'm not sure that I care too much about how physically fit a politician/leader is - it's more important that they concentrate on the job in hand and do the right thing.
Going back to Fox News - I was reading about how the company mandates Covid vaccinations for its staff, whilst their news anchors are pushing an anti-vaccination position. Even they hold their audience in contempt.
Just for your edification, Nigel dear, here are the first two pages (of 15,500,000 results) of a Google search for "Trump refuses to answer questions". You really need to up your lying game, it's just shooting fish in a barrel at the minute.
Goodness me, Nigel, even for you this is so full of... did you let off a flashbang in a sewage farm? This wouldn't even pass muster on Just a Minute
You've just lifted that nonsense from the Trump playbook. "...sleepy Joe...in a basement..." this says more about your credibility than about anything else. Trump was only too keen to do press conferences (or have them done for him)... in which he or his minions spouted (and continue to spout) nonsense.
A Fox link from the death rattle days of Trump's timein the White House. Of course even Fox was putting him on the naughty step then, no sane person nor even Fox credited Trump with any credibility.
Left wing MSM? In the USA? Name one.
I think you'll find that Trump did NOT win the last US election because over 50% of the US population did NOT think he was one of the best presidents. But don't let tricky things like facts get in the way of your narrative.
Bear in mind too that Trump spent one day in three of his time as president playing golf. He really took the job seriously, not. Even Tricky Dicky Nixon left some positive achievements, establishing the EPA and stopping the development of chemical and biological weapons. Pray tell, what are Trump's achievements?
He built a wall
He drained the swamp
He brokered peace with N Korea
Hmmm, is that a real list of achievements you want to credit him for? Or slightly tongue in cheek?
I thought the last one gave it away.
I'm sure he believes them all.
Sorry, wasn't sure if Boo had hacked your account.
...and he vastly improved his golf score.
Really? Reaaalllllly?
So Trump who was elected with a clear minority of the vote, lost his re-election with a clear minority of the vote and who never had anywhere near a 50% approval rating is now regarded by a majority of people as one of the best Presidents ever?
Your source for that assertion had better be spectacular.
Let's face it - their source is probably one Donald J. Trump
That's it then. The argument is unassailable
Bigly!
Is that why over half of the electorate voted against him?
PS. He is no longer President Trump. Former President Trump is acceptable (some say....)
Anyone else seen this? https://www.saferoadsforall.org/
"Prepared collaboratively by leading UK road safety and mobility experts and organisations, Safe Roads for All calls for Government to direct a Safe and Healthy Mobility Strategy and Action Plan for Roads, 2021-30, to deliver safety, health, sustainability and prosperity for people, the economy, the nation and the planet."
While they do have a national walking organisation, they strangely omit any national cycling organisations, and entirely coincidentally I'm sure, all cyclists are hemetted in their pictures. There doesn't appear to be any way to contact the authors, or any information on who they might be, they just claim to be "experts". The whole thing is rather peculiar especially since it is anonymous.
I notice that they claim that some of their "alliance members" are cycling organisations, though? The Bicycle Association (LBS lobby group IIRC), Bikeability, Sustrans.
Does look a bit astroturfy, though...
If you download the report PDF it lists out the eight contributors at the end with brief biogs. (too much to c+p here).
Briefly, though, they're from:
'Trump supporters are morons' shock!
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