Today, Sunday, Donald Trump turns eighty years old, but the American president chose to celebrate this milestone not with a quiet family celebration, but with a mixed martial arts fight on the South Lawn of the White House, in an event that Newsweek magazine says is unprecedented in this form inside the presidential residence, even if it was officially presented as part of the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of American independence.
According to the magazine, the event is called “UFC Freedom 250,” and it coincides with Trump’s birthday and American Flag Day. While the White House presented it as “one of the most entertaining nights in American history,” its timing and location prompted the American and British press to ask a broader question about whether age, which was long used against former President Joe Biden, has become one of the most dangerous weaknesses in Trump’s second term.
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Trump is the oldest man to take the constitutional oath in the history of the American presidency, and the second president to enter the club of 80 while in the White House after Biden. If he completes his term until January 2029, he will leave office older than all his predecessors.
However, as Newsweek says, the issue is no longer a number on the birth certificate, but rather a political issue related to health transparency, public appearance, and Trump’s own precedents in turning Biden’s age and mental ability into an electoral weapon.
Head under the lenses
The Wall Street Journal says that Trump’s advisors chose a strategy opposite to what the Biden team did late in its term. Instead of reducing visibility, they made the president present everywhere.
He holds long sessions in the Oval Office, answers calls from reporters, and posts frequently on his social platforms late at night.
This density may provide the White House with material to prove its vitality, but at the same time it reveals what the newspaper calls the two inseparable faces of an elderly president.
On the one hand, Trump is still capable of making headlines and clashing sharply with journalists. On the other hand, the cameras follow him when he bruises his hands, bends his back, slips the tongue, and confuses names, places, and crises, from Greenland and Iceland to calling the Strait of Hormuz “the Strait of Iran.”
And in The Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire explains why Trump has not yet been subjected to the same level of scrutiny that has dogged Biden. Trump, in his opinion, is not fading in the same way; He is a large man, with a loud voice, adept at occupying the screen, unlike Biden, who in his later years seemed thinner and fainter.
But the magazine believes that this presence may obscure a more confusing question. Does the constant appearance mean that the president has not changed, or does it make his change less obvious?
Health test
In contrast, the conservative press is pushing a different narrative. The New York Post quoted prominent Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Newt Gingrich, that Trump “defies age” and maintains exceptional energy, and Senator John Kennedy even said that the president sometimes calls him at two in the morning.
This narrative is based on a busy schedule, and on statements from the White House describing Trump as “the sharpest, most available, and most energetic president.”
But British newspapers focus on what that picture does not answer. The Telegraph newspaper indicates that Trump underwent a medical examination in May in which 22 specialists participated, and that the White House says that his health is “excellent,” but it does not provide a complete medical record, as American law does not require presidents to publish full details of their health.
The newspaper recalls a previous history of exaggeration in Trump’s medical reports, including a letter from his former doctor Harold Bornstein in 2015, most of which he later said Trump dictated himself.
As for the Independent, it quotes doctors and experts on aging that anxiety is not primarily related to bruises or swelling of the legs, which are symptoms that may be familiar with aging, but rather to presidential behavior itself, from impulsiveness, anger, and staying up late to complex speeches and constant hostility to opponents.
They stress that they do not provide a remote diagnosis, but they believe that a short test such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, in which the White House says Trump received a perfect score, is not enough alone to reassure the public if concerns go beyond memory to judgment and discipline.
Biden’s ghost
Trump cannot separate this debate from Biden. He made “Sleepy Joe” a sarcastic title for an entire political campaign, before Biden dropped out of the 2024 race after a debate that deepened doubts about his ability to continue.
Therefore, the White House responds today that the Democrats do not have the credibility to hold Trump accountable after they long defended Biden.
But this response does not close the file. According to Newsweek, researchers in presidential politics believe that Trump’s repeated attacks on Biden’s age raised voters’ sensitivity to the age of presidents in general, and caused the question to bounce back on him after his return to the White House.
As for the Guardian, it goes further, citing critics that the problem is not with age alone, but rather with its meeting with a political figure who already tends toward impulsiveness and escalation.
Polls support this shift. In 2024, Gallup found that 63% of Americans would vote for a candidate over 70, but only 31% said that about a candidate over 80.
In 2023, the Pew Center found that about half of Americans would prefer a president in his fifties, compared to only 3% who believe that the most appropriate age is the seventies or later.
With Trump specifically, a Reuters/Ipsos poll in February showed that 61% believe he has become more unstable with age, while Newsweek quoted YouGov as saying that 49% see him as too old to be president.
Therefore, the White House fight appears to be more than a strange celebration of the birthday of a head of state. It is a political attempt to formulate an anti-eighty meaning: not old age but fighting, not retreat but a display of strength, and not a question about health but noise on the grounds of the White House.
