As a middle aged Gen-Xer, I thought it was surreal in Spring 2016, primary season, when the three major players for the US Presidency were so old. Hillary Clinton, then 68; Bernie Sanders, then 75; and Donald Trump, then 69. At 68, Hillary was the youngest.
Then on Election Day in November 2020, it was a completely septuagenarian contest: Donald Trump, age 74, defeated by Joe Biden, age 77 (days from turning 78).
Now we are looking down the barrel of a possible 2024 election where Biden would be 81 (days from turning 82) and Donald Trump would be 78. If he lives that long.
So much chatter about Joe Biden’s age, but we don’t see much talk about Trump’s age with respect to his 2024 intentions. He is about to turn 77…. note, 77 is the same age Biden was in 2020, when there was nonstop cluck-cluck-clucking about Biden being “too old” and (now proven absolutely untrue!) possibly sliding into serious dementia.
I don’t know what you see in this clip of Trump speaking yesterday, but I see an old man in profound mental stress— and it cannot help but also be physiological stress. Trump doesn’t eat healthy and, from the neck down, he doesn’t exercise what he’s got left to work with. Now he is staring down the barrel of the very real possibility of being locked up in prison. For years and years. Fear and deep anger and the gravity of the situation were in his eyes and countenance yesterday. He cannot be sleeping well. He has no loving spouse to lean on.
Also consider what his niece Mary Trump has written and spoken about: DJT is the ultimate toxic narcissist, it’s what motivates so much of what and who he is. Trump is now experiencing a massive “narcissistic injury” as he faces the living nightmare of his downfall and possible life imprisonment happening so absolutely publicly. Everybody is watching this as it happens.
And next Wednesday June 14, the day after he appears in the Miami Federal Courthouse to be formally indicted — he “celebrates” his 77th birthday. Turning the same age as Joe Biden 2020, when half of everybody was saying Biden is “too old for this.” Biden, who unlike Trump, eats healthy and exercises and has a loving family at his side.
What I’m saying here is that we have significant odds of Trump going to prison — and that’s just from this case; Georgia could hit as hard or harder — and we have very significant odds of Trump having a major medical incident within the coming year. The stress this almost-77-year-old man is now under — and yes, he knows it now, Donald Trump knows he may be sentenced to life in prison, with the entire world watching — the stress he is under would break a lot of people his age.
Trump is in mortal trouble, both from his legal perils and from his mind/body stress level. And it doesn’t look like “Doctor Harold Bornstein” will be issuing another letter describing him as superlatively healthy, anytime soon.