Biden uses humor to try to defuse concerns about his age

By SEUNG MIN KIM
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Joe Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, embarks on his reelection campaign, he is increasingly musing aloud about his advanced age, cracking self-deprecating jokes and framing his decades in public life as a plus. He is hoping to convince voters his age is an asset rather than a vulnerability. He says he’s served in the Senate for 270 years and says the fourth U.S. president is a good friend. The octogenarian president’s comments about his age can also be serious, often used to underscore a broader point. It’s a strategy that evokes how then-President Ronald Reagan defused questions about his age — then 73 — during the 1984 campaign.