Especially in the latter half of Joe Biden’s presidency, the political world maintained a near-obsessive focus on the Democrat’s age. Donald Trump, who’ll turn 80 in the spring, will probably never confront the volume and intensity of similar questions, but the incumbent president is starting to see the kind of coverage he may have hoped to avoid.

The New York Times reported this week, for example, on the Republican’s effort to “project round-the-clock energy, virility and physical stamina,” which is starting to give way to an awkward new reality. From the article:

Mr. Trump, 79, is the oldest person to be elected to the presidency, and he is aging. … [N]early a year into his second term, Americans see Mr. Trump less than they used to, according to a New York Times analysis of his schedule. Mr. Trump has fewer public events on his schedule and is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips. He also keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m., on average.

The same report noted a recent Oval Office event when Trump appeared to fall asleep. There’s also the unusual fact that the president recently had an MRI, and when asked about the reason for the scan, he wouldn’t say.

Complicating matters further was Trump’s reaction to the Times’ article, which he could’ve ignored but instead attacked in a lengthy online tirade published to his social media platform.

The Republican’s pushback pointed to a series of easily discredited claims. Trump said he won in 2024 by “a Landslide,” which isn’t true and has nothing to do with concerns about his advanced age. He added that he’s “settled 8 Wars” (which isn’t true), created a “Great” economy (which isn’t true) and delivered on making the United States “RESPECTED AGAIN all over the World” (which isn’t true).

This was the president’s opportunity to put his best foot forward. That he responded with a flurry of nonsense isn’t a great sign.

Trump went on to insist that “I have never worked so hard in my life,” shortly before departing for his glorified country club in Florida where he’s spent an inordinate amount of time this year relaxing and playing golf.

For good measure, the Republican peddled a variety of other tiresome lies about Biden-era inflation and his approval rating, before boasting anew about having “aced” a “COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST.”

The president has long struggled to understand the purpose of these exams, and his confusion about this doesn’t exactly put to rest the underlying concerns about his age.

But even if we put all of these details aside, let’s not brush past that Trump, while using Stalin-like rhetoric to attack The New York Times, proceeded to argue that the reporter who wrote the article “is ugly, both inside and out.”

So, on the heels of the Republican’s “piggy” incident and overwhelming evidence of Trump’s routine and casual misogyny, especially toward women who work in media, the president didn’t think twice about attacking a newspaper article by complaining that he doesn’t find the journalist who wrote it to be attractive.

If the goal of the pushback was to prove to the public that the incumbent president is up to the job, Trump failed in humiliating fashion.