In the wake of last month’s presidential debate, much of the 2024 race shifted to questions about President Joe Biden’s age, health and fitness. Republicans wanted to speak of little else; Democrats fearing Biden’s electoral defeat felt compelled to go public with their concerns; and media professionals covered the conversation in granular detail.
For some of Donald Trump’s detractors, this seemed wildly unfair. If the incumbent’s age and occasional difficulties are under the microscope, they asked, how is it that Biden’s rival is avoiding similar scrutiny? Isn’t the nearly-as-old Republican, who routinely seems unable to tell the difference between fiction and reality, equally deserving of the same questions?
It was, and is, a fair point — and as a new Washington Post report makes clear, the spotlight is turning in ways the GOP nominee might not like.
After weeks of intense focus on President Biden’s health and age that ended with his withdrawal from the campaign on Sunday, the script has flipped: Former president Donald Trump is now the oldest presidential nominee in history — and one who has been less transparent about his medical condition than his former opponent.
The Post’s report went on to note that Trump is “a 78-year-old with a history of heart disease and obesity,” who “has not shared any updated bloodwork results or other specific information during this campaign to help experts assess his ongoing medical risks.”
To be sure, the Republican has long had a problem with transparency. He promised to release his tax returns, for example, and then went back on his word. His White House also abandoned public access to visitors’ logs. Team Trump was also less than forthcoming when it came to readouts of the then-president’s conversations with foreign leaders, and at times, those close to the Republican even tried to hide information about his golfing habits.
But it’s Trump’s secrecy surrounding his health that’s relevant anew — not just because he’s now the oldest presidential nominee in American history, and not just because he’d turn 82 while in office if elected to a second term, but also because he was recently shot during an assassination attempt, and Trump and his team have been reluctant to share even basic details about the care he received after the incident.
It’s against this backdrop that the former president, just this morning, published an item to his social media platform that read, “I don’t know who said it, or where it came from, perhaps the Radical Left, but I never discussed, or thought of, Jamie Dimon … for Secretary of the Treasury.”
It was just last month when Trump sat down for an interview with Bloomberg and said he’d consider JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon for Treasury secretary.
I think we know how the political world would respond if this happened with Biden, which is all the more reason to take seriously questions about Trump’s fitness.
What’s more, there’s no reason to assume these questions will go away as the new presidential race unfolds.
