Biden’s stutter surges into the presidential campaign as Trump mocks and exaggerates

President Biden recently sent out a video of a meeting with a 9-year-old with a stutter, telling the young boy, “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do anything.”

He wrote about having “struggled with a stutter all my life,” an unusual nod to the ongoing nature of his battle. And in interviews, he has spoken at length about the childhood trauma and embarrassment of struggling to speak.

Donald Trump has mocked Biden in recent weeks by falsely claiming that the president is stuttering during his speeches, and he has parodied the purported stammer on occasion, but Biden has been relying on a longtime centerpiece of his personal and political biography, embracing it to sell himself as the candidate of compassion for the 2024 presidential rematch.

The election may ultimately be decided by sweeping issues like the economy, immigration, abortion and democracy. But the early phase has also been marked by a discussion, in ways both crass and subtle, of a far more personal topic - Biden’s stutter. That back-and-forth reflects the candidates’ sharply differing views of disability and struggle, and their role in a divided political culture that can reward ridicule more than acceptance.

“We don’t even talk about what is ‘presidential’ anymore,” said Ted Kaufman, a longtime confidant and friend of Biden’s. “But if you look at Joe Biden’s reaction and you look at Trump’s reaction, one is presidential and one is not.”

He insisted that Trump’s attacks don’t get under Biden’s skin - “He’s been through worse things than that in his life” - and said the stutter highlights a core part of the president’s past and “an example of how he overcame things.”

Trump’s aides contend that he ridicules Biden’s competence, not his stutter. “President Trump has never mocked Joe Biden’s speech impediment,” said adviser Jason Miller. “He’s simply called out the fact Biden is a cognitively impaired, low-IQ individual.”

There is no evidence that Biden is cognitively impaired, and Miller declined to say how he squares his assertion with Trump, for example, telling a crowd after one Biden speech earlier this year: “Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing.”

It was after the State of the Union on March 7, when Biden attacked Trump in fiery terms, that Trump most recently introduced Biden’s stutter into the campaign. At a rally in Georgia, Trumped asked sarcastically if Biden would “bring the country t-t-t-together.” Biden never used that phrase in his speech, and in the seven instances he said the word “together,” he did not stutter.

Biden reacted by embracing the disability he battled to overcome as a child, one that he still works to subdue. In Wisconsin last week, Biden met with Harry Abramson, a 9-year-old boy who had written to Biden asking how he had defeated his stutter and adding that - if he could overcome his own - perhaps he, too, could one day become president.

“You can do whatever you want to do,” Biden told Harry, according to a video released by the campaign.

Afterward, Biden sent out a clip of the exchange from his personal X account, writing: “Harry, I’ve struggled with a stutter all of my life. Thank you for telling me about yours, and don’t let anyone tell you it will stop you from achieving your dreams.”

Biden’s use of the phrase “all of my life” reflects a new way of talking about his battle, said John Hendrickson, author of “Joe Biden’s Stutter, and Mine,” an in-depth article in the Atlantic. “This is a remarkable shift in language from Biden — by far the closest he’s ever come to saying ‘I still stutter,’” he tweeted.

Biden and his aides talk about the stutter in complex and even contradictory ways. Biden has often portrayed it as something he fully conquered as a child, a story of resilience and triumph. At other times, aides have highlighted the stammer to explain Biden’s verbal stumbles, framing them as a function of a disability rather than age.

In a December interview with Conan O’Brien, the comedian and podcast host observed that Biden’s struggle with stuttering must have helped “fuel” and “forge” him as a person. Biden responded, “Well, when I was a kid …,” prompting O’Brien to quickly add, “You’ve got this problem licked, by the way.”

Biden cast the childhood experience as central to his sympathy for those less fortunate.

“We were never allowed to make fun of anyone, no matter how mean they were to us, if they had something they couldn’t overcome. Swear to god,” Biden told O’Brien. “If you did, you’d get your rear end kicked when you went home. Not a joke. And so, it taught me that there’s a lot of people dealing with dilemmas that take away their pride, their dignity.”

Although Biden rarely focuses on his stutter as a current challenge, he often brings it up as a story of overcoming adversity.

He has spoken about it at fundraisers and campaign rallies. He brought it up when presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom and when honoring the national teachers of the year. He mentioned it at an event in Virginia on health-care costs, at a eulogy in Delaware, at a commencement address at South Carolina State University. He cited it during a banquet in Dublin, a talk to U.S. military personnel in the United Kingdom, an event for the Toys for Tots drive.

“Probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me was one of the worst things,” Biden said on a podcast hosted by Anderson Cooper that explores grief. “When I was a kid, I stuttered badly - t-t-t-talk-talk like-like that - … and I used to hate the fact I stuttered.”

When he had a paper route, Biden has said, he would work out conversations in his head before he got to someone’s door to avoid tripping over his words. He would read poetry - the same Irish poets he would later quote as president - to sound out the words.

He recalled as a high school freshman being embarrassingly exempted from a public speaking assignment. “But I realized it was a great lesson I learned, because everybody has something they can’t fully control - everybody,” Biden told Cooper. “And so it turned out to be a great gift for me that I stuttered.”

To this day, he says that one of his favorite movies is “The King’s Speech,” which depicts the ascent to the throne of King George VI of Britain, who must overcome a speech impediment and address the country during World War II.

For Trump, however, the stutter has been one more way to go after Biden. The presumptive Republican nominee regularly embraces mockery and derision, whether the target is undocumented immigrants, GOP rivals or liberal Democrats.

Trump most often makes fun of Biden for purportedly struggling to find his way offstage after a speech, depicting the president as confused and aimless. But the stutter has also become a target.

Following a Biden speech in Pennsylvania in January, Trump spoke to a crowd in Sioux Center, Iowa. “Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing,” Trump said to a chuckling crowd. “He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy.”

“‘He’s a threat to d-d-democracy,’” he continued, pretending himself to stutter. “Couldn’t read the word.”

The remark was untrue. Biden said the word “democracy” 29 times in his speech, never stumbling over it.

Miller, the Trump adviser, downplayed the distinction between mocking Biden’s stutter and attacking his general competence.

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“Joe Biden can’t put two sentences together,” Miller said. “It’s not President Trump’s responsibility to diagnose what’s wrong with Biden. He’s simply observing what every other American sees, that Joe Biden is a shell of his former self and unable to lead our country. This weakness has emboldened our adversaries and led to death and destruction at home and abroad.”

Experts say that someone who has conquered a stutter in his youth can see it reemerge as he ages. Biden himself can shift his emphasis, sometimes framing the stutter as a distant memory and other times as an ongoing battle.

For the most part, he places it far in his past. “I used to stutter when I was a little boy, until I was in high school,” Biden said in December 2022. On another occasion that same year, he said he largely vanquished his stutter when he took a speech and debate class in college, even if it still appears from time to time.

But occasionally, as during a CNN town hall in February 2020, Biden talks of a never-ending struggle. “It’s a debilitating situation,” Biden said at that event. “And I still occasionally, when I find myself really tired, ca-ca-catch myself saying something like that.”

David Frank, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Oregon who has studied Biden’s speeches, said the president clearly uses techniques to work around his stutter, like staying away from certain words or phrases. “There are words that he avoids or substitutes for, and he avoids syllables that he knows will stumble over,” Frank said.

Frank said Biden should acknowledge his stutter more fully, saying it would help him connect to audiences. “He’s like a lot of us confronting our own demons,” Frank said. “If he admits he hasn’t conquered it, he is perceived to be weak. If he says he’s totally overcome it, he’s not being true to himself.”

Biden allies have often pointed to his willingness to speak openly about his struggle, even if it’s usually in the past tense, as a way to uplift the estimated 3 million Americans who stutter.

At an event in 2022, for example, he noticed someone in the crowd holding a sign that read, “Thank you for having a stutter.” In 2020, he encountered 13-year-old Brayden Harrington at a campaign stop, giving him advice for handling his speech impediment and later inviting him to speak at the Democratic National Convention. And last week, he met Harry Abramson, the 9-year-old in Wisconsin.

“If you think about it, the only handicap everybody thinks they can still laugh at is stuttering,” Biden said at a fundraiser in October.

As for Trump, Biden is not the first person whose disability he has made fun of. In 2015, as a presidential candidate, he derisively imitated New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a congenital condition affecting joints known as arthrogryposis. Trump has denied knowing about Kovaleski’s condition.

As president, Trump resisted appearing alongside wounded veterans, as reported by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in their book “The Divider,” and later confirmed by former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly. “I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”

Trump has disputed Kelly’s account.

In a 2015 television interview, Trump responded to criticism from columnist Charles Krauthammer, who used a wheelchair, by calling him “a guy that can’t buy a pair of pants.”

“Trump thinks mocking people and taking away their rights makes him look strong,” said Biden campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo. “But it just reveals how weak, insecure and vulnerable he is having to face voters who want real leadership.”

Some of those close to Biden say it is significant that he not only overcame his stutter, but also entered a profession that demands endless public speaking.

“It’s like, how does a guy go from being a stutterer to a guy who makes a career out of speaking?” he added. “Who in history has given more speeches than Joe Biden?”