In a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken after the presidential debate in June, 86% of Americans said President Joe Biden was too old to serve a second term. This survey and similar findings played an essential role in Biden’s decision to depart the presidential race, directly rebutting the president’s contention that only donors and media elites wanted him not to run. Vice President Kamala Harris’ momentum since entering the race, while running on a platform almost identical to Biden’s, has only confirmed the depth of voters’ concerns about the president’s age.
And yet since Biden dropped out, it has been largely forgotten that many voters are also rightly concerned about Donald Trump’s age. In the same Post/ABC poll, 60% of Americans, including 65% of independents, said Trump is too old for another term. But apart from a few initial articles and some jabs on social media, the question of Trump’s age has largely been forgotten.
Should the 78-year-old Trump win in November, he would be older upon taking office than Biden was when he took office in 2021.
To be sure, Harris’ campaign is busy introducing her to voters. And in the wake of Trump’s naming JD Vance as his running mate, Democrats have delighted in pointing out that the MAGA movement’s leaders are somewhere between weird and straight-up creepy. But there’s still nearly 100 days left until Election Day — plenty of time to return to the issue. Even if some media outlets seem curiously incurious about age since Biden stepped aside, Trump’s age remains a serious issue.
Should the 78-year-old Trump win in November, he would be older upon taking office than Biden was when he took office in 2021. Trump has a history of heart disease yet habitually releases medical records lacking any useful details. His personal physician when he first ran for president later admitted Trump outright dictated the memo declaring that he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” In 2020, he and his team hid the seriousness of his Covid infection from the public. His assurances of his cognitive and physical health amount to “trust me.”
Four years in the White House did not age Trump as much as other presidents — perhaps because he spent less scheduled time working than any other president. But time comes for everyone, and Trump is no exception. Even a cursory contrast between Trump’s first and third runs for the presidency shows him clearly diminished from his initial campaign. His tendency to ramble has only grown, and the confident bluster of 2016 has given way to exhaustion. He loses track of his thoughts mid-sentence or even mid-word. He asks his supporters to vote 24 hours after asking them not to vote. He mixes up names with increasing frequency, confusing Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley and Biden with Barack Obama. He even struggled to keep his eyes open at his Manhattan criminal trial this year.
And Trump’s own staff knows his struggles. Just as Biden’s staff increasingly limited the president’s media and public appearances until June’s debate left it with no choice, so has Trump’s staff largely kept him confined to friendly venues. In his first two runs for the presidency, Trump frequently sat down with a wide range of media. This time around, he has stuck largely to Fox News and other such outlets. Trump’s disastrous appearance Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention showed exactly why his staff has built that bubble. Afterwards, at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., Trump tried a new way to parse the issue. “81 is not old,” he insisted. “But [Biden] is a bad 81.” (In the same rally, he referred to Senate candidate Dave McCormick as Pennsylvania’s “future governor.”)
The former president’s new excuse is further confirmation that voters’ concerns about Trump’s age should not be forgotten. Yes, if Democrats bring it up, they will be accused of being hypocrites after having long rejected calls for Biden to step aside. But in the end, they acceded to voters’ wishes — and reality. The concern about Trump’s age is no less legitimate. The presidency is an incredibly difficult job, requiring long hours, quick decisions and extraordinary focus. Those requirements have not changed since Biden dropped out.