The Daily Populous Tuesday December 30th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by inews.co.uk and submitted by theipaper

To put it down to age is to simultaneously demean older adults while also letting Trump off too lightly

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Donald Trump was the oldest US President to ever be inaugurated at 78. After 11 months in office, Trump’s fitness to lead the country has been called into question. This is mostly thanks to increased speculation around his health: his hands are often bruised, he has appeared to fall asleep in meetings and slur his speech, and some commentators have argued that his erratic behaviour and policy changes suggest mental decline. Yet he insists he is the pinnacle of health at age 79, saying that “there will be a day when I run low on energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (“That was aced”) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now!” So, is Donald Trump too old to be president? Political editor of The New World, James Ball; journalist and 80-year-old Robert Fox; and director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting Sarah Baxter offer their perspectives.

Donald Trump is 79 years old. He has run as the Republican nominee in three successive US elections, and the only one of them that he lost – and he did lose in 2020, despite his protestations – was also the only one in which his opponent was even older than he is.

All of which is to say this: of the long, long list of problems with Trump as US president, his age is somewhere near the bottom. Trump is an unfit president, but not because he’s 79.

It became immensely apparent that Joe Biden should not be the Democratic candidate in 2024 during the first presidential debate, but few honest critics could reasonably say his presidency was a disaster – the Biden White House passed major legislation, invested in infrastructure, and generally delivered on its agenda. It certainly delivered far less drama, day-to-day, than Trump’s first term.

Most of Trump’s deficiencies as a human being have little to do with age.

The current president of the United States has been found by a civil court to have sexually abused the writer E Jean Carroll, and then to have defamed her by lying about it. Similarly, Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies, all charges relating to falsifying business records relating to hush money he paid to Stormy Daniels to prevent her disclosing their alleged sexual encounter before the 2016 election.

Trump is both an ignorant and an incurious president who seems to understand little of how government works, or even how normal Americans live. In speeches, he has appeared to confuse the concept of asylum – providing a safe haven to refugees – with asylums that treat the mentally ill. He seems unaware of how tariffs work. He has repeatedly claimed to know nothing about the criminals he routinely pardons during his term.

Sometimes Trump’s ignorance is attributed to his age, but to do so is to let him off the hook. During Trump’s first term, when he was still surrounded by at least some competent staff, details of how he operated leaked out from horrified officials. Trump would simply not read intelligence briefings – to get his attention meant cutting briefings first to a single page, then to half a page, with bullet points. Pictures or video were essential for anyone wanting to hold his attention.

To put this down to age is to simultaneously demean older adults while also letting Trump off too lightly. Almost all of the worst traits he displays as President come from his longstanding character. It is true that he has got more extreme with time, and less filtered – but this could have any number of causes.

While it could be age (it is not uncommon to become less filtered as we get older), it could just as easily be that as he’s spent longer in power, and surrounded himself with extremists, his worst instincts have come to the fore.

His recent obsessive focus on legacy – especially naming things after himself – might be about age, but it’s also about decades of indulging his ego. Trump putting his name on buildings is hardly a new phenomenon, after all.

American voters are perfectly entitled to have concerns about Trump’s age and health, and the rest of us are free to speculate, too. He is an elected politician occupying the most powerful job role in the West, not a private citizen. The fact he seems to slur his speech at times, or fall asleep in meetings, is a matter of public concern.

There are good grounds to call for better public disclosure of the medical records of US Presidents, but there have been for decades – Franklin Delano Roosevelt covered up his health woes during World War II, after all, and then died in office. It seems ridiculous that the President can choose the physician who releases his health data, and control what gets released.

Similarly, America appears to be a gerontocracy, with more senators over 80 than under 40 – and has a sclerotic politics unfit for our times, perhaps as a result. But to call for age restrictions or to blame age for Trump’s shortcomings is to do all concerned a disservice. Voters are entitled to make an informed choice at the ballot box, and age is something voters know and are able to take into account.

On this, no one was tricked. Voters knew Trump’s age when they returned him to the Oval Office, just as they knew about his felonies. They elected him all the same. Age is not at the root of that problem, either.

James Ball is the political editor of The New World

pjflyr13 on December 30th, 2025 at 12:03 UTC »

When Epstein calls him a bad guy, that says a lot.

No-Post4444 on December 30th, 2025 at 11:31 UTC »

Trump needs to be thrown into prison for life, full stop. No one disagrees with that except braindead MAGAts.

Also...indecency? That was his only vice you could find? Fascism, dictatorship, idiocy, ruthlessness, pedophilia, being a war criminal, racism, sexism, narcissism....

theipaper on December 30th, 2025 at 11:28 UTC »

Donald Trump is 79 years old. He has run as the Republican nominee in three successive US elections, and the only one of them that he lost – and he did lose in 2020, despite his protestations – was also the only one in which his opponent was even older than he is.

All of which is to say this: of the long, long list of problems with Trump as US president, his age is somewhere near the bottom. Trump is an unfit president, but not because he’s 79.

It became immensely apparent that Joe Biden should not be the Democratic candidate in 2024 during the first presidential debate, but few honest critics could reasonably say his presidency was a disaster – the Biden White House passed major legislation, invested in infrastructure, and generally delivered on its agenda. It certainly delivered far less drama, day-to-day, than Trump’s first term.

Most of Trump’s deficiencies as a human being have little to do with age.

The current president of the United States has been found by a civil court to have sexually abused the writer E Jean Carroll, and then to have defamed her by lying about it. Similarly, Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies, all charges relating to falsifying business records relating to hush money he paid to Stormy Daniels to prevent her disclosing their alleged sexual encounter before the 2016 election.

Trump is both an ignorant and an incurious president who seems to understand little of how government works, or even how normal Americans live. In speeches, he has appeared to confuse the concept of asylum – providing a safe haven to refugees – with asylums that treat the mentally ill. He seems unaware of how tariffs work. He has repeatedly claimed to know nothing about the criminals he routinely pardons during his term.

Sometimes Trump’s ignorance is attributed to his age, but to do so is to let him off the hook. During Trump’s first term, when he was still surrounded by at least some competent staff, details of how he operated leaked out from horrified officials. Trump would simply not read intelligence briefings – to get his attention meant cutting briefings first to a single page, then to half a page, with bullet points. Pictures or video were essential for anyone wanting to hold his attention.

To put this down to age is to simultaneously demean older adults while also letting Trump off too lightly. Almost all of the worst traits he displays as President come from his longstanding character. It is true that he has got more extreme with time, and less filtered – but this could have any number of causes.

While it could be age (it is not uncommon to become less filtered as we get older), it could just as easily be that as he’s spent longer in power, and surrounded himself with extremists, his worst instincts have come to the fore.

His recent obsessive focus on legacy – especially naming things after himself – might be about age, but it’s also about decades of indulging his ego. Trump putting his name on buildings is hardly a new phenomenon, after all.

American voters are perfectly entitled to have concerns about Trump’s age and health, and the rest of us are free to speculate, too. He is an elected politician occupying the most powerful job role in the West, not a private citizen. The fact he seems to slur his speech at times, or fall asleep in meetings, is a matter of public concern.