He confidently declared himself to be “sharper than I was 25 years ago,” while criticizing The New York Times for a comprehensive article from the previous week. The piece detailed how the 79-year-old president seems to have slowed down during his second term.
“Trump is sharp, but they’re not sharp,” he commented regarding the newspaper.
As the 2024 campaign progressed, Trump frequently mentioned Biden dozing off on the beach, highlighting it as particularly inappropriate and odd behavior.
“How do you fall asleep when cameras are all around you, right?” he questioned during an event in September 2024.
In a conversation with podcast host Andrew Schulz the same month, he remarked, “You’ll never catch me dozing off in front of the camera.”
If dozing off during meetings indicated that Biden lacked “enthusiasm and belief,” why wouldn’t the same criteria be applicable to Trump?
Of course, when it comes to health questions, context is key. There is no question that Biden presented as much more elderly than Trump does, and that those around Biden obscured his deterioration.
Biden didn’t keep anything approaching the schedule or public presence Trump does today, even as Trump’s appearances and domestic travel, as the Times noted, have declined. (His foreign travel, however, has increased so far this term.)
(The White House this week did ultimately release a summary of his October medical imaging of his cardiovascular and abdominal systems – after the president claimed he didn’t even know what body part it had been conducted on.)
During Trump’s first term, Dr Harold Bornstein, who’d written a glowing letter about his health in 2015, said that Trump had “dictated that whole letter.”
The letter had implausibly claimed Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” despite his being close to 70 years old at the time and famously averse to exercise.
Those kinds of things are going to seed suspicions and legitimise investigations such as the Times’, especially when the president shows more signs of age.
Just like calling someone “Sleepy Joe” ad nauseam is going to make it more noticeable when Trump can’t seem to shake his own sleepiness.
