President Donald Trump is older than the Internet. He also predates microwave ovens and color television. Last year, at 78, Trump became the oldest person to be elected president of the United States, snatching the record from the septuagenarian he defeated, Joe Biden. Yet Trump, now 79, presents himself to his followers as a paragon of masculine strength and virility.
A New York Times article this week highlighted how that image is at odds with the reality of Trump’s advancing years. Although Trump has never been one for early mornings in the Oval Office — even during his first term — the Times analysis found that the president is starting public events later and holding fewer of them. Trump has spent a lot of time overseas in this first year of his second term, but his total number of official appearances “has decreased by 39%. In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official events between Jan. 20 and Nov. 25 of that year. For that same time period this year, Mr. Trump has appeared in 1,029 official events.”
This president happily brings up his age but only in the interest of boasting about how far beyond the norm he is compared to his chronological peers.
In addition to analyzing Trump’s schedule, the Times report drew attention back to the opacity of Trump’s overall health status. For instance, the president underwent an MRI at Walter Reed military hospital in October, but he provided no details of why the scan was done, only telling reporters that the evaluation “was perfect.” In July, Trump was diagnosed with “chronic venous insufficiency” after noticing swelling in his legs. He applies makeup to his hand to cover bruising that, according to the Times, “his physician and aides say is caused by taking aspirin and shaking so many hands.” During his most recent physical, also in October, his physician said the president “continues to demonstrate excellent overall health” — but one assumes that’s relative to his age. It can be hard to ignore the images of Trump appearing to doze off during public events.
Aside from the physical issues, some of which are visible, there is the question of Trump’s mental fitness. As my colleague Zeeshan Aleem noted during last year’s presidential race, Trump’s rambling style of discourse — which the former reality star refers to as “the weave” — effectively distracts from a litany of errors, meandering or repetitive statements, and other cognitive lapses that would be controversial with other public figures. Trump has defensively pointed to a screening test he took during a physical in April as proof of his mental fortitude: “I had a perfect score. And one of the doctors said he’s almost never seen a perfect score. I had a… had a perfect score. I had the highest score. And that made me feel good.”
Despite the dispassionate framing of the Times report, Trump posted an explosive response on Truth Social. He began by listing his usual litany of accomplishments, then pivoted into an attack on the Times and a demeaning shot at the story’s main author (at least his third denigration of a female journalist in the past two weeks, but hey, who’s counting?). In a statement to the Times included in the article, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed questions about the president’s health: “Unlike the Biden White House, who covered up Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and hid him from the press, President Trump and his entire team have been open and transparent about the president’s health, which remains exceptional.”
Two years ago, when it was Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose health and age were in the news, I wrote: “American society on the whole fears aging. It is a culture that works overtime to stave off death, even while having one of the lowest life expectancies in the world compared to the amount spent on health care every year. It is considered taboo to bring up age in a variety of contexts, including whether or not someone is still hardy enough for the rigors of public service after more than eight decades on the planet.”
I would add a caveat when the age discussion is about Trump. This president happily brings up his age but only in the interest of boasting about how far beyond the norm he is compared to his chronological peers. In Wednesday’s TruthSocial post, he came close to conceding that age is a reality that comes for us all — but then swerved back into delusion: “There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (“That was aced”) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now!”
Whatever Trump wants to say, there is no escaping the reality of entropy.
In 2017, the New Yorker reported that Trump believes that “a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy.” The idea that someone can have good days and bad days as they grow older falls outside of this ideology, leaving only a before and after the tipping point of decline. This binary way of thinking about health and age can account for only so much, though, while with each passing day Trump simply grows older.
To be fair, this president is not the first American leader to be cagey about his health. While not nearly as hyperbolic, Biden and his aides sought to showcase him as a man who could still handle the demands of the presidency despite his own advancing years. Other presidents well before Biden have hidden their illnesses or disabilities, becoming enough of a trope to spread into fiction. The presidency itself is no normal role but an official position in which, arguably, admitting weakness could have detrimental effects on the nation. The unusualness of the role and the strains of the office are precisely why all U.S. presidents undergo regular physicals and the public is told about the findings.
But Trump stands out for his insistence on his superiority in the face of time – regularly making an argument that appears to be part of his political brand and core personality.
There’s more than a little bit of pride and ego at work here, both from Trump and from the people who have tied their political fortunes to him. The same could be true of all the predecessors who tied physical hardiness to their job performance. But whatever Trump wants to say, there is no escaping the reality of entropy. And it would be better for the country if its leaders were not so hubristic as to think that they have ascended beyond the constraints of time.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW Daily.