NY Times: Say, Trump is Getting Pretty Old

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

This is absolutely the most predictable thing in the world and also the most infuriating. The NY Times has done an analysis of President Trump's schedule and concluded that he's doing fewer daily events and also occasionally looks like he needs a nap

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Mr. Trump, 79, is the oldest person to be elected to the presidency, and he is aging. To pre-empt any criticism about his age, he often compares himself to President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who at 82 was the oldest person to hold the office, and whose aides took measures to shield his growing frailty from the public, including by tightly managing his appearances...

Mr. Trump has hung a photo of an autopen in a space where Mr. Biden’s portrait would otherwise be, and disparages his predecessor’s physicality often...

Mr. Trump remains almost omnipresent in American life. He appears before the news media and takes questions far more often than Mr. Biden did. Foreign leaders, chief executives, donors and others have regular access to Mr. Trump and see him in action.

Still, nearly a year into his second term, Americans see Mr. Trump less than they used to, according to a New York Times analysis of his schedule. Mr. Trump has fewer public events on his schedule and is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips.

If you follow that link in the paragraph above it goes to a tell all story about Biden's age which the Times published in 2025, just days before he left office. But during Biden's term, the subject was addressed less directly. In 2022, they published a story titled "At 79, Biden Is Testing the Boundaries of Age and the Presidency." But that story was almost a defense of Biden's age and fitness. Remember the claim that he was a "super-ager?"

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It is, unsurprisingly, a sensitive topic in the West Wing. In interviews, some sanctioned by the White House and some not, more than a dozen current and former senior officials and advisers uniformly reported that Mr. Biden remained intellectually engaged, asking smart questions at meetings, grilling aides on points of dispute, calling them late at night, picking out that weak point on Page 14 of a memo and rewriting speeches like his abortion remarks on Friday right up until the last minute.

But they acknowledged Mr. Biden looks older than just a few years ago, a political liability that cannot be solved by traditional White House stratagems like staff shake-ups or new communications plans. His energy level, while impressive for a man of his age, is not what it was, and some aides quietly watch out for him. He often shuffles when he walks, and aides worry he will trip on a wire. He stumbles over words during public events, and they hold their breath to see if he makes it to the end without a gaffe...

Everyone ages differently, of course, and some experts put Mr. Biden in a category of “super-agers” who remain unusually fit as they advance in years.

“Right now, there’s no evidence that the age of Biden should matter one ounce,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a longevity specialist at the University of Illinois Chicago who studied the candidates’ ages in 2020. “If people don’t like his policies, they don’t like what he says, that’s fine, they can vote for someone else. But it’s got nothing to do with how old he is.”

No, dummy, Biden wasn't a super ager and there was evidence that his age should matter. Just a few months after S. Jay Olshansky offered this opinion, Biden would call out to a deceased congresswoman during a public event. But Olshansky, who I'm willing to bet is a Democrat, helped frame any questions about Biden's age as inherently political, something the White House capitalized on in the years to come.

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So having been completely taken in by Biden's loyalists the Times has now decided it's going to dig into the issue of age with President Trump. We won't make the same mistake again seems to be the impulse, which just happens to align with their politics. Biden was a Democrat and got explanations and excuses. Trump is a Republican and he gets detailed analysis of his schedule and a recounting of every time he has looked sleepy.

During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6, Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs.

At one point, Mr. Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds.

Now that a Republican is in office, we're warned not to trust his aides statements about his health.

“The people around him are similar to Biden’s aides,” Mr. Dallek said. “They would talk as if we’re living in a little bit of a fantasy world. Trump, in that way, with the help of his aides and his doctors have created this fiction about his health to hide the hard, cold truth that he is 79 and one of the oldest people to ever occupy the Oval Office.”

Democrats carried out one of the biggest partisan scams in history, presenting an aging and badly fading Biden as "sharp as a tack" and ready for another term. The NY Times finally managed a deep dive on this three days before he left office. But 10 months into Trump's term, the Times is already suggesting Trump's aides are living in a fantasy world. 

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You really can't make this stuff up. If they didn't have glaring double standards they wouldn't have any standards at all.

President Trump is clearly not happy with the story. He posted a lengthy response on Truth Social calling the paper an "enemy of the people" and called the reporter ugly.

The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again. I won the 2024 Presidential Election in a Landslide, winning all Seven Swing States, the Popular Vote, and the Electoral College by a lot. I won our Nation’s Districts by 2750 to 550, a complete wipeout. I settled 8 Wars, have 48 New Stock Market Highs, our Economy is Great, and our Country is RESPECTED AGAIN all over the World, respected like never before. The last Administration had the Highest Inflation in history - I have already brought that down to normal, and prices, including groceries, are coming down. To do this requires a lot of Work and Energy, and I have never worked so hard in my life. Yet despite all of this the Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite. They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE. This cheap “RAG” is truly an “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.” The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out. Despite all of this, I have my highest Poll Numbers, ever, and with record setting investment being made in America, they should only go up. 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! GOD BLESS AMERICA & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

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I would have left out the remark about the reporter's appearance but he's not wrong that this story looks pretty thin, especially when compared to the paper's cover-up coverage of Biden.

Finally, here's the photo the story used to illustrate its thesis.

Do you think they are rooting for failure?

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 25, 2025
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