Trump campaign sees boost after boost amid bad week for Biden

For those campaigning to bring Donald Trump back to the White House, the past week has seen much to celebrate. For those concerned for the health of American democracy, it felt like a disaster.

Joe Biden was hit by a brutal special counsel report that painted him as elderly with a failing memory, fans of Trump eager to see him on the 2024 ballot appeared set for victory at the US supreme court, and Trump’s only remaining serious challenger in the Republican primary race suffered humiliation at the polls.

Trump could even draw satisfaction from Biden’s decision to turn down an hour on national television before Sunday’s Super Bowl, continuing a theme of Biden largely shunning one-on-one major press interviews.

Biden said he wanted to save millions of people, about to enjoy one of the biggest spectacles in American sport, from a lengthy dose of politics even if plenty of other presidents before him have shown no such consideration.

But few believed that was the real motive during a week in which, to Trump’s evident glee, Biden was officially and devastatingly painted as too old and forgetful to know if he was committing a crime.

Biden’s decision to refuse the pre-Super Bowl interview had already been made before Robert Hur, the special counsel investigating his handling of classified documents while out of office, released a report clearing but damning the president.

Hur put his finger on Biden’s open electoral wound when he described the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” after a series of gaffs that have increasingly alarmed Americans who worry over the 81-year-old Biden’s health and age but also dread the prospect of 77-year-old Trump’s return to the White House with his raft of criminal