President-elect Donald Trump will become the oldest person ever sworn in as president on Monday, but concerns about his age haven’t dogged him the same way they sunk President Joe Biden.
Biden was 78 years old during his inauguration in 2021. The president-elect will also be 78 when sworn in for his second term, but his June birthday edges out Biden’s in November by just four months.
Biden’s advancing age and deteriorating mental faculties were public concerns prior to his decision to exit the 2024 race last summer. Those debates only picked up steam following Biden’s dismal presidential debate performance and the revelation that Dr. Kevin Cannard, a Navy Parkinson’s expert, had made eight separate visits to the White House in 2024.
Trump did appear to visibly suffer from fatigue during the final weeks of the cycle, including verbal gaffes and a bizarre town hall that turned into an impromptu dance party. However, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign failed to capitalize on those public moments or sow enough doubts among voters that Trump was too old for the job.
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The sharpest criticism of the 2024 campaign came from Republican primary challenger Nikki Haley who questioned Trump’s mental fitness after he confused her with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Haley asked voters prior to Biden dropping out if they “really want to go into an election with two fellas that are going to be president in their 80’s?”
Polling conducted by YouGov just weeks before Election Day found that 44% of Americans said Trump was too old to be president, up from 35% in February of 2024. YouGov’s poll found those who answered the same about Biden grew from 63% to 70% across the same timeframe.
Republican strategists, and three incoming Trump administration officials, discounted the idea that age will play a factor during the president-elect’s second term in office.
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“President Trump is out winning club golf championships and doing hundreds of speaking events a year, not hiding in the basement,” one Republican strategist told the Washington Examiner. “American voters aren’t stupid. Is President Trump older now than eight years ago? Of course, but when you compare him to Joe Biden, he seems like a different species.”
“President Trump has more energy and more stamina than anyone in politics, and is the smartest leader this country has ever seen,” incoming White House communications director Steven Cheung added in a statement.
It also helps that the President-elect wants to surround himself with one of the youngest Cabinets in history. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance turned 40 during the campaign and will be the first-ever millennial to hold the nation’s second-highest elected office. Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s 27-year-old White House press secretary, will be the youngest person ever to hold that position.
An analysis from Axios found that the average age of Trump’s vice president, White House chief of staff, and nominees for Attorney General, Defense Secretary, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Treasury, will be just 54.1 years on Inauguration Day. That’s the lowest average age for the top six Cabinet positions since former President George H.W. Bush was sworn into office. For comparison, the average age of Biden’s top six Cabinet members on January 20, 2021, was 63.7.
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Still, Biden’s precipitous physical decline over the past few years, coupled with Trump’s family history, suggests that a change in Trump could occur just as quickly in the White House.
Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was diagnosed with dementia in his 80s before he died in 1999 at the age of 93. A year later, Trump’s mother died at the age of 88 without any known medical history of dementia. While Trump would be more predisposed to cognitive decline due to his genetic history and age, those conditions do not guarantee he would also suffer from the disease.
Meanwhile, a New York Times audit found that Trump’s 2024 campaign speeches were much longer, more repetitive, and more negative than 2016, suggesting signs of potential mental decline. Trump’s 2024 stump speeches averaged 82 minutes, compared to 45 in 2016. His use of absolutes, like “never” or “always,” jumped 13% from 2016 to 2024, and the president-elect is now 32% more likely to use negative descriptors than positive ones, a margin increase of 11 points compared to 2016.
The fact that Trump will be older than Biden by the time his second term in office comes to a close isn’t lost on members of the outgoing administration.
Two former senior Biden White House officials told the Washington Examiner to “buckle up” and prepare for more political attacks on Trump’s age over the next four years.
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“If you seriously think Donald Trump has the same physical measurements as an All-Pro NFL running back, I’ve got some magic beans to sell you,” the one former Biden official joked.
“The cat’s out of the bag,” the second former Biden aide stated. “Trump might have started this fight, but I don’t think he’ll like how it’s going to end. Nobody beats Father Time.”