Presidents are no strangers to attacks from the opposition party. Not by a long shot.

But even by today’s standards, President Joe Biden and Sen. Rick Scott found themselves in an especially heated and personal back-and-forth Tuesday.

It started with a statement issued Tuesday morning by Scott. The Florida Republican anticipated that Biden, delivering a speech on combating inflation, would attack Scott’s tax plan. 

Scott’s statement argued the “most effective thing Joe Biden can do to solve the inflation crisis he created is resign. He’s the problem. Getting him out of office is a quick and easy solution.”

But Scott also questioned Biden’s mental capacity. 

“Let’s be honest here,” the senator’s statement continued. “Joe Biden is unwell. He’s unfit for office. He’s incoherent, incapacitated and confused. He doesn’t know where he is half the time. He’s incapable of leading and he’s incapable of carrying out his duties. Period.

“Everyone knows it. No one is willing to say it. But we have to, for the sake of the country. Joe Biden can’t do the job.”

Biden indeed called out Scott by name in his speech and criticized his plan to tax all Americans regardless of income level.

“Sen. Rick Scott of Wisconsin, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, laid it all out in a plan. It’s the ultra-MAGA agenda,” Biden said, giving Scott’s incorrect home state.

“Their plan is to raise taxes on 75 million American families, over 95% of whom make less than $100,000 a year (in) total income,” the president continued. “The average tax increase would be about $1,500 per family.

“They’ve got it backwards, in my view.”

After Biden’s speech, a reporter asked the president about Scott’s suggestion that he resign. Biden laughed it off, saying sarcastically: “Resign? That’s a good idea.”

In response to the attack on his cognitive abilities, Biden said of Scott: “I think the man has a problem.”

In February, Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, released an 11-point plan to “rescue America” if Republicans win back control of Congress this fall. One proposal would require all Americans “pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount.” 

Roughly half of Americans do not pay federal income taxes because their income doesn’t meet the minimum threshold.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has made it clear he does not endorse Scott’s blueprint, and Democrats have seized on Scott’s plan ahead of the midterm elections by trying to cast the GOP as a party that wants to raise taxes on working-class families while cutting them for the wealthy and corporations.

Because Scott’s plan does not include details for taxing all Americans, the numbers Biden provided Tuesday are, at best, debatable. 

In response to Scott’s proposal, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that if every unmarried filer pays at least $100 and every couple pays $200, taxes would increase $100 billion in 2022, with more than 80% of the increase paid for by households earning $54,000 a year or less.

In a tweet Wednesday, Scott said he’s invited Biden to Florida for a debate on how to flight inflation but that the president is “too scared” to agree to it.

The former Florida governor has continued to attack Biden’s mental capacity on social media, including by calling attention to the president misstating that Scott was from Wisconsin.  

“The president just said I’m from Wisconsin,” Scott tweeted, alleging that Biden "is so incapacitated and incoherent, he can’t even keep his states straight."

Such attacks on Biden — who, at 79, is the oldest president in American history — have been popular among conservatives. They usually center on the president forgetting a name or stumbling over his words during speeches. 

In February, more than three dozen congressional Republicans sent a letter to Biden urging him to undergo a cognitive test. 

Former President Donald Trump has, too, repeatedly demanded Biden undergo a cognitive test. Trump’s latest call for the test came during a rally last week in Pennsylvania.

Trump, however, has had his own share of verbal miscues in recent weeks. During a rally last month in Delaware, Ohio, the former president seemed to struggle to remember the name of his own social media company, Truth Social. And at a May 1 rally in Greenwood, Nebraska, Trump bungled the name of the Ohio Senate candidate he endorsed, JD Vance.

“We’ve endorsed JP, right? JD Mandel,” Trump said.

One of Vance’s opponents in the Republican primary was former state Treasurer Josh Mandel.

Note: This article was updated to correct a typo.