Donald Trump celebrated his 78th birthday on Friday, the opportunity for Americans to assess the physical and mental fitness of the Republican candidate, they who are rather accustomed to commenting on that of his rival, President Joe Biden.
Whether the Republican billionaire or the Democratic leader wins the November 5 election, either would become the oldest American president to take the oath of office.
Gaffes, tremors…
Donald Trump celebrated his birthday during a big gathering organized in a gigantic ballroom, very close to Mar-a-Lago, his luxurious residence in Florida. After a “happy birthday” sung by the crowd, a birthday cake installed near his lectern, Donald Trump, during an hour of speech, used his usual incendiary rhetoric to target migrants and especially his opponent Joe Biden who, according to the republican, “falls asleep at every event”.
Joe Biden, 81, objectively shows recurring signs of fatigue. But in recent months, Donald Trump has also shown signs of excitement. He confused the names of several cities and rulers. He also warned that the world was heading toward a Second, not Third, World War and launched into numerous rambling tirades.
Thursday, during a closed-door exchange with Republican elected officials, he would have described Milwaukee, a strategic city in many respects for the American elections, as “horrible”, sparking a barrage of criticism and questions. Are these repeated blunders, the videos of him clinging to a railing to avoid slipping, trembling while drinking a glass of water, concrete illustrations of a decline in the former president? These sequences are in any case a hit with Joe Biden’s team, which is not happy to shine the spotlight, from time to time, on the age of the other candidate.
The age of presidents, an old debate
The Democratic president’s camp took advantage of the former American president’s birthday to publish a press release this Friday accompanied by a large format and very unflattering photo of the Republican sweating, with red cheeks and drawn features. “Happy birthday Donald. You are a crook, a failure, an impostor and a threat to our democracy,” tackled James Singer, a spokesperson for Joe Biden’s campaign team.
These comments made the Trump camp jump, which in return described Joe Biden as “weak and incompetent”. “He’s a brain-dead zombie,” snapped a party spokesperson.
Debates around the age of American presidents are not new. During Ronald Reagan’s second term, some observers were already wondering about the deterioration of his intellectual abilities. Former US President Jimmy Carter himself sounded the alarm in a post in 1994, worrying about the “danger” posed to the United States by the possibility that a president’s abilities would be weakened by the fact of a “neurological disease”.
