To hear President Donald Trump and his spokespeople tell it, he is possessed of almost superhuman physical and mental abilities, making questions about how age might be affecting the president absurd. Yet while genuine information about Trump’s health is hard to extract from this administration, signs of an accelerating enfeeblement are difficult to ignore.
For most of the past year, Trump has had a persistent ugly bruise on his hand that the White House insists is from handshaking. He appeared to nod off in one public event after another. “Dozy Donald” has become fodder for late-night comics and “Saturday Night Live.” He repeatedly said he had an MRI — which the White House called a “standard” scan, though such an exam is not routine for most physicals — but didn’t know of which body part (it turned out, The Wall Street Journal reported, that his doctor says the test was a CT scan, not an MRI). He brags constantly about how well he performs on cognitive tests administered by doctors — as though passing a test meant to identify dementia makes him one of the world’s most extraordinary geniuses.
There’s a serious issue amid the jokes: The president is not only aged, he’s aging — and will continue to do so.
It’s fine to laugh at Trump’s drooping eyelids during those interminable Cabinet meetings filled with aides offering encomiums to Trump’s fabulousness, or marvel at his ham-handed makeup job. But there’s a serious issue amid the jokes: The president is not only aged, he’s aging — and will continue to do so. Today he appears to nod off in meetings, rambles even more when he talks and seems disturbingly disinhibited.
What’s he going to be like in three years?
While Trump usually doesn’t appear old in quite the same way Joe Biden did, some issues may be even more troubling with this president than they were with his predecessor.
Trump is 79. In 2028, before his second term ends, he will exceed the age Biden was when he left office. The presidency is physically, intellectually and emotionally demanding, which is why so many presidents age visibly over their terms. It would be unusual, and shocking, if Trump didn’t appear much older now than he has in the past.
The pertinent question is whether Trump’s advanced age has changed anything about how he does his job.
There, the evidence is unclear — not because Trump is so full of vim and vigor, but because he never took the substantive parts of his job all that seriously to begin with. In his first term, his schedule was filled with hours every day of “executive time,” which apparently consisted mostly of watching TV (and phoning in to some favorite shows). Because aides in his second administration leak to the press less than those in his first administration did, his daily routines are more opaque.
From what we can see, however, the years are taking their toll on Trump. His public appearances are even more rambling and incoherent than before, and his decision-making is more erratic and mercurial. Consider how unpredictable his tariff policy has been, with reversals and sweeping changes driven by the pettiest of impulses. And that’s the centerpiece of his economic program.
But while the second-term version of Trump is in many ways worse than the first, one could account for the change without attributing it solely to age. He’s perhaps more himself than he ever was, and he appears disinhibited. He swears more often in public and insults reporters — especially women reporters. And those insults have grown even harsher. It could be that he feels both validated and vindictive because of the events of the four years he was out of office, including the Supreme Court granting him immunity and the fact that he won another election and, as article after article tracing Trump business dealings shows, is blazing unprecedented paths of corruption.
Which brings us to not just what Trump is like today, but also how his advancing age could affect the rest of his term.
The pertinent question is whether Trump’s advanced age has changed anything about how he does his job.
That was the question Biden should have asked himself but didn’t. Biden was convinced that while he was aging outwardly — with his gait growing more labored and his voice losing its power — he could still call upon his instincts and decades of experience to make good decisions. Even if that was true as he became the first U.S. president to hold the office at age 80, it became simply impossible to believe that Biden — who would have been 86 at the end of a second term — would have been able to shoulder the burdens of the presidency.
Importantly, though Biden was more interested and involved in the details of policymaking, his administration didn’t have the same personal character that Trump’s does, with every aspect of its agenda shaped by the president’s unpredictable whims. We’ve seen how often Trump has some impulse or half-formed idea and his underlings scramble to pretend it’s a real policy, which sometimes it actually becomes. The Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America! How about we seize Greenland! Let’s drown the Oval Office in so many gold trinkets it looks like a tackier version of Saddam Hussein’s palace, and knock down the East Wing while we’re at it! Some of what results is trivial, but sometimes there is real consequence. And what if Trump becomes even more erratic over the next three years? We could wind up with a kind of chaos that makes today’s volatility look like stability. The increasing attention on his age has clearly bothered Trump. A November New York Times article exploring how aging has affected him sparked a lengthy rant on Truth Social. The “top doctors,” he insisted, “have given me PERFECT Marks — Some have even said they have never seen such Strong Results.” He “ACED” his cognitive tests, Trump added, and “it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous” for anyone to say otherwise. Then, on New Year’s Day, came The Wall Street Journal’s similarly lengthy exploration of his aging. Trump cooperated with the article and made some unusually candid remarks. He takes a higher dose of aspirin than his doctors recommend, he said, which could help explain the bruising on his hands and the fact that he is easily cut. (“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” he explained.) He tried compression socks for his swollen ankles, he said, but didn’t like how they felt. “Trump’s staff have also counseled him to try to keep his eyes open during public events,” the paper reported, but Trump says closing his eyes is “very relaxing to me.” There was also mention of his declining ability to hear people talking to him, especially in a large group. This all probably sounds familiar to anyone with an elderly loved one: an increasing number of physical challenges, compromised physical abilities and a relatable reluctance to accept the inevitable consequences of aging. After the Journal article published, Trump resumed shouting on social media about his supposedly perfect health. But whether he likes it or not, people are going to keep talking about his age. Because he’ll keep giving us reason to worry.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
