Donald Trump is old too!

Facts.

(Donald Trump)

If you’ve paid even the slightest bit of attention to the 2024 presidential race, you know this fact: Joe Biden is old.

At 80, Biden is the oldest person ever to seek a second term as president. (He was also the oldest person to ever win a first term as president.)

His age is a matter of considerable concern to voters who worry a) Biden isn’t up to the job he is seeking and b) if he wins a second term, he may not be able to serve all four years.

Here’s something that you hear a lot less of: Donald Trump is old too! At 77, Trump, too, would be the oldest person ever elected to a second term!

In the last 48 hours, Trump’s advanced age is getting a lot more attention, however.

Here’s the New York Times:

Mr. Trump has had a string of unforced gaffes, garble and general disjointedness that go beyond his usual discursive nature, and that his Republican rivals are pointing to as signs of his declining performance.

On Sunday in Sioux City, Iowa, Mr. Trump wrongly thanked supporters of Sioux Falls, a South Dakota town about 75 miles away, correcting himself only after being pulled aside onstage and informed of the error…

…In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also told supporters not to vote, and claimed to have defeated President Barack Obama in an election. He has praised the collective intellect of an Iranian-backed militant group that has long been an enemy of both Israel and the United States, and repeatedly mispronounced the name of the armed group that rules Gaza.

And, here’s Axios:

In recent weeks, Trump has mixed up Jeb Bush with George W. Bush and repeatedly said “Obama” and “Obama administration” while trying to criticize Biden or Hillary Clinton, slip-ups the [Ron] DeSantis campaign has highlighted.

Last week, DeSantis' campaign revealed a "Trump accident tracker" to compile the former president's verbal slips on the trail, and asked whether Trump had the “stamina” to be president — using a word Trump often has invoked against his opponents, particularly Hillary Clinton in 2016.

(Back in late September, I touched on this same theme — wondering whether Donald Trump was getting worse.)

These questions about Trump are particularly relevant because we know less about his health than we have known about the health of any other modern president.

Trump pointedly refused to release any detailed medical records on the campaign trail in 2016 — instead putting out a farcical letter from his personal doctor that said “if elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” (That same doctor, years later, said Trump dictated the contents of that letter.)

In office, the readouts from Trump’s annual physical were equally gushing — and useless.

In 2018, Ronny Jackson, who at that time was the White House physician, proclaimed that Trump had “incredible genes” and was in “very, very good health.” Added Jackson: “I told the President that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years he might live to be 200 years old.”

(Sidebar: Jackson went on to be elected to the House as a Republican from Texas — and has distinguished himself as one of Trump’s staunchest defenders.)

During his term, Trump took a cognitive test — as an attempt to answer persistent questions about his mental abilities and draw a contrast with then-candidate Joe Biden. Trump scored 30 out of 30 on the test.

The test — and Trump’s repeated insistence on citing his performance — became a point of mockery, however. As Peter Baker wrote in the New York Times in July 2020:

Rather than dispensing with the issue, Mr. Trump drew new ridicule this week when he declared it nothing short of “amazing” that he did so well on a test that, among other things, required him to identify an elephant. To demonstrate just how hard he said the test really was, he went on television to recite, over and over, the words that he had been asked to remember in the right order: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

Cable television played the president’s performance on a virtual loop on Thursday, and those five words trended online. A group of anti-Trump Republicans instantly produced an online ad mocking the president. T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and other clothing with “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” emblazoned on them were quickly offered for sale. They have in effect become the haiku of the 2020 campaign.

The lack of transparency about Trump’s health extended to the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump was initially dismissive of mask wearing — “I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens…I don't know, somehow I don't see it for myself. I just, I just don't,” he said — but eventually, in October 2020, caught the virus.

He was briefly hospitalized but he and the administration downplayed the severity of the illness. During his stay, his physicians were decidedly cagey about providing any real details about his condition.

We only later learned that Trump was far sicker than anyone close to him let on. As the New York Times reported in February 2021:

President Donald J. Trump was sicker with Covid-19 in October than publicly acknowledged at the time, with extremely depressed blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem associated with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus, according to four people familiar with his condition.

His prognosis became so worrisome before he was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that officials believed he would need to be put on a ventilator, two of the people familiar with his condition said.

Then there is the issue of Trump’s approach, as an older man, to diet and exercise.

Trump is a notorious lover of fast food — there are conflicting reports as to his favorite meal from McDonald’s — and has resisted efforts by doctors to change his diet over the years. “On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and Diet Coke,” two of his former senior aides wrote.

He was, at least while in office, obese for a man of his stature. He weighed 243 pounds (he is 6’3”) in his 2019 physical. (Trump drew derision when he was charged in Fulton County earlier this year; his weight was listed as 215 pounds.)

Trump’s view of exercise is, um, unconventional. He believes that every person is born with a certain amount of life force — and that exercise unnecessarily drains a person’s battery.

“A lot of people go to the gym and they’ll work out for two hours and all,” Trump has said. “I’ve seen people … then they get their new knees when they’re 55 years old and they get their new hips and they do all those things. I don’t have those problems.”

Asked about his personal exercise habits in 2019, Trump famously/infamously responded: “I get exercise. I mean I walk, I this, I that. I run over to a building next door. I get more exercise than people think.”

Despite all of that, the public — at least to date — has not expressed the same concerns about Trump’s advanced age as they have about Biden’s.

In an August AP poll, almost 8 in 10 Americans (77%) said Biden was too old to serve another term. Just over half the sample (51%) said the same of Trump.

What explains that disconnect? Biden allies insist the focus on the president’s age is a media creation — that the press has over-covered Biden’s age while ignoring the fact that Trump is just three years his junior.

I’m very skeptical of that view. Poll after poll shows real concern — even among Democrats — about Biden’s age. The media didn’t create that.

My answer? Biden moves and talks noticeably slower than he did even 5 years ago. (His aides have acknowledged as much privately.). People notice that.

Trump, thanks to his antic use of social media and near-constant golfing, has created a perception in the minds of voters that he is more spry and active than his age would suggest.

That perception, however, may be changing. There is no question that Trump is making more verbal gaffes than he did a few years ago — and people are starting to notice.

Look. Age is going to be an issue in the 2024 campaign. But, it may not be the clear winner that the Trump people have long assumed.