Trump’s Age & Presidency: Health & Concerns

The day before Halloween, President Donald Trump landed at Joint Base Andrews after spending nearly a week in Japan and South Korea. He was then whisked to the White House, where he handed out candy to trick-or-treating children. His allies boasted about the president’s resilience: “This man has been non-stop for DAYS!” one wrote online.

A week later, Trump seemed to doze during an event in the Oval Office.

With eye-catching social media posts, combative interactions with reporters, and partisan speeches, Trump can project energy, virility and physical endurance 24 hours a day. Now, at the end of his eighth decade, Trump and the people around him still talk about him as if he were the Energizer Bunny of presidential politics.

The reality it’s more complicated: Trump, at 79, is the oldest person ever elected to the presidency, and he is getting older. To preempt any criticism about his age, he often compares himself to President Joe Biden, who at 82 was the oldest person to hold office, and whose aides took steps to protect its increasing fragility from the public, including by strictly managing their appearances.

Trump has hung a photo of an autopen in a space where Biden’s portrait would otherwise be, since He often belittles his predecessor’s physical condition.

“He sleeps all the time: during the day, during the night, on the beach,” Trump said of Biden last week, adding: “I’m not a sleepyhead.”

Trump remains almost omnipresent in American life. He appears before the media and takes questions much more often than Biden did. Foreign leaders, CEOs, donors and others have regular access to Trump and They see it in action.

Still, almost a year into his second term, Americans They see Trump less than they used to.according to an analysis of The New York Times of your agenda. Trump has fewer public events scheduled and is traveling much less nationally than he did at this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although He is making more trips abroad.

It also maintains a shorter public agenda than I used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 pm, on average.

And when he’s in public, occasionally, Your battery shows signs of wear. During an event in the Oval Office that began around noon on Nov. 6, Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes while executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs.

In a moment, Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closedand seemed to doze intermittently for several seconds. At another moment, he opened his eyes and looked toward a row of journalists watching him. He only stood up after a guest standing near him fainted and collapsed.

Trump has sparked additional questions about his health by sharing news about medical procedures he has had, but not details about them. While in Asia, Trump revealed that he had undergone an MRI at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at the beginning of October.

“I gave them the full results,” Trump told reporters, misrepresenting the summary that was released by his doctor, which made no mention that Trump had had an MRI and contained few other details.

“I have no idea what they tested,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One recently after being asked again about his MRI. “But whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well, and they said that I had as good a result as you have ever seen.”

Trump also applies makeup to a bruise on the back of his right hand, adding to speculation about a medical condition his doctor and aides say is caused by take aspirin and shake so many hands. In September, the bruise on her hand, along with swollen ankles, caused online observers to speculate wildly about her health.

Responding to a list of questions about Trump’s health, including the results of his MRI and whether or not he was falling asleep in the Oval Office, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, praised the president’s energy and pointed to Biden.

“Unlike the Biden White House, which covered up Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and hid it from the press“President Trump and his entire team have been open and transparent about the president’s health, which remains exceptional,” Leavitt said in a statement.

For years, concerns and questions about Trump’s health often have been responded to with evasion or explanations minimal on the part of the people around him. Trump’s doctors have not taken questions from reporters in years, including when he was seriously ill with COVID in 2020. No medical briefings were held after an assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, last summer.

Many of the facts that worried critics about Trump’s physical health during his first term are present now. Does not exercise regularlyin part because he has a long-standing theory that people are born with a finite amount of energy and that Vigorous activity can deplete that reserve, like a battery. He enjoys red meat and has been known to eat entire bags of McDonald’s.

According to his doctor, however, he has lost weight. In 2020, Trump weighed approximately 110.7 kg, a weight considered formally obese for his height 1.90 m. This year, Trump’s doctor, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said in a summary of the president’s health that he weighed about 250 pounds.

Trump frequently rambles about the effectiveness of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic — he calls them the “fat drug”— and talks about people he knows who have taken the medications, but his doctor has not said if he takes any of the drugs.

“President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the functions of commander in chief and head of state,” Barbabella wrote in April.

Still, in his second term, Trump’s agenda shows some significant changes.

According to a Times analysis of official presidential agendas in a database maintained by Roll Call, Trump’s first official event begins later in the day.

In 2017, the first year of his first term, Trump’s scheduled events began at 10:31 a.m. on average. By contrast, Trump in his second term has begun scheduled events on average in the afternoon, at 12:08 p.m. His events end on average at almost the same time as they did during the first year of his first term, shortly after 5 p.m.

Trump’s total number of official appearances has decreased by 39%. In 2017, Trump held 1,688 official events between January 20 and November 25 of that year. For the same time period this year, Trump has appeared at 1,029 official events.

Trump still regularly goes down to the Oval Office after 11 a.m., according to a person familiar with his schedule. This routine is a carryover from his first term: After he complained about having too many events scheduled in the mornings, Trump maintained so-called “executive time” hours in the White House residence before heading to work.

Trump has maintained frequent international travel, often with tight stops, including a day trip to Israel and Egypt in October. Trump has logged more international trips than he did in the first year of his first term; He took four international trips that year and has taken eight so far this year.

Trump holds frequent events in the Oval Office, posts regularly on social media and is often at his golf clubs on weekends, although most of what he does there is hidden from the public.

Trump has rambled for a long time in his speeches; During his 2024 campaign and into his second term, the rambling has often been noticeable. May deviate from script to share stories that are sometimes full of falsehoods, such as his false claim that his uncle, John Trump, had been a professor for domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski at MIT.

“I said, ‘What kind of student was he, Uncle John, Dr. John Trump?’ He said, ‘What kind of student?’ And then he said, ‘seriously good.’ “He said he was out there correcting everyone,” Trump said during a speech in Pennsylvania in July. “But he didn’t do very well, he didn’t do very well, but it’s interesting in life. But I will say this, that we have the biggest brains, we have the most power and we are going to have the most electricity.”

Presidents generally try to paint the best possible picture of their health. Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, said that Trump followed examples set by his predecessorsincluding the most recent one.

“The people around him are similar to Biden’s aides,” Dallek said. “They would talk as if we lived in a little fantasy world. Trump, in that sense, with the help of his aides and his doctors, has created this fiction about his health to hide the cold, harsh truth that He is 79 years old and is one of the oldest people to occupy the Oval Office.”

Like every other medical patient, and every other president, what Trump chooses to reveal to the public about his health It depends on him.

Without an official template for disclosing health information, doctors sometimes rely on summaries of medical evidence without going into detail. A doctor for Biden, who faced persistent questions about his health, wrote last year that he had undergone an “extremely detailed” neurological examination, but did not say whether the exam contained common tests to assess cognitive decline or detect signs of dementia that are often recommended for older adults.

“President Trump’s doctor has released two detailed reports following his two physical exams as part of his ongoing health maintenance plan; and Anyone watching President Trump at his daily public events can clearly see that he is in impressive physical shape. and mental, with a relentless work ethic,” Leavitt said in a statement.

Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served as White House physician from 2000 to 2013 and wrote a book on presidential health care, said Trump’s agenda contrasts with those of George W. Bush, who was 54 years old when he took office, and Barack Obama, who was 47. They both incorporated exercise into their daily schedules; Bush was in the Oval Office at 6:45 a.m. every day, Kuhlman said, and Obama arrived at 10 a.m., although his days often stretched later, until about 7 p.m., when he would join his family for dinner.

“They portray him as effective,” Kuhlman said of Trump’s aides, “but every time he’s in the Oval Office, he’s sedentary.”

Kuhlman added that it is “praiseworthy” that, at his age, Trump still climbs onto Air Force One using a long ladder, “but “You don’t know what he does as soon as he walks in the door.”

With your approval rating falling among voters and more Americans reporting dissatisfaction with the economy, Trump’s allies have urged him to turn his attention back to domestic issues.

The president’s aides say they hope travel more around the United States as the midterm elections approachbut Trump is also considering a trip to Davos, Switzerland, to attend a conference alongside world leaders and corporate titans in the winter.

There is one thing Trump is doing more of in his second term: talk about life after death. He has mentioned heaven, and the question of whether he would get in, a half-dozen times since taking office for the second time.

“There has to be some kind of report card up there somewhere,” Trump said during an interview with Fox News in August, adding, “It’s a beautiful thing.”

As he rambled, his characteristic competitiveness kicked in and he referred to Biden again.

“Look, religion was the backbone of our country; it’s much less so now, but it’s getting a lot stronger under my watch,” Trump said. “It was terrible under Biden. I was so amazed, you know, I won the evangelicals by like 88%.”

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