Is media downplaying Trump’s verbal missteps?

(NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump’s latest gaffes have received a fraction of the media attention paid to those of President Joe Biden, according to NewsNation media contributor Colby Hall.

“Apart from some outliers, they are largely being ignored,” Hall said Wednesday on “NewsNation Now.”

In a recent opinion piece for Mediaite, Hall said that either way you slice it, there are two people running for president who have a combined age of nearly 160.

“The American electorate is about to be faced with the choice of an 81-year-old incumbent, President Joe Biden, whose occasional stutters, stiffening gait and notable lack of press availabilities have only fueled negative coverage of his geriatric candidacy. I’ve written before that it’s not always ageist to cover Biden’s experience and the benefits and challenges that come with it,” Hall wrote in his Mediate piece.

Hall said the media’s reluctance to draw attention to Trump’s latest gaffes is likely due to “Trump fatigue.”

“A lot in the media are giving his clear missteps a pass for fear of being called biased,” Hall said. “And I argue that we should be giving a lot of attention not just to Trump’s gaffes and age, but also Biden’s.”

In a recent speech, Trump appeared to mix up former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., during a rally in New Hampshire while discussing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Look at all the people back there — you got a lot of people. This is supposed to be a quaint little area. This is not quaint at all,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Concord, remarking about the crowd size, later adding, “You know when (Haley) comes here she gets like nine people, and the press never reports the crowds, you know?

“By the way, they never report the crowd on Jan. 6. You know Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, you know, they — do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it,” Trump claimed without evidence. “Because of lots of things … like Nikki Haley is in charge of security — we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people.”

In addition to Trump appearing to confuse Haley with the former House speaker, Pelosi’s office has pushed back against Republicans’ allegations placing blame on her for lack of security at the Capitol on the day of the riot.

Trump, 77, has accused Pelosi of turning down security he says his administration offered, but a special House committee empaneled to probe the attack found no evidence to support that claim.

In examining both Trump and Biden in terms of aging and gaffes possibly related to their age, Hall told NewsNation that it’s fair game if done with sensitivity.

“You have to do it in a sort of a dispassionate, nonpartisan way,” Hall said. “But I think it can be done for both Biden and Trump.”

NewsNation affiliate The Hill and The Associated Press contributed to this report.