U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press aboard Air Force One enroute to the U.S. following his official visit with President Xi Jinping in China, May 15, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
As President Donald Trump approaches his 80th birthday on June 14, questions persist about his cognition and mental stability to lead the United States.
Writing for The Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire said on Monday that as Trump grows older, "traveling less, switching to more comfortable shoes, and seeming to nod off during meetings—his age isn’t getting the same kind of scrutiny" as President Joe Biden did.
He noticed that as Biden aged, he appeared to grow thinner and his voice quieter. Trump, by contrast, grows fatter and seems louder and more agitated. His behavior should be drawing more scrutiny, Lemire argued.
"His recent behavior should prompt even more questions than usual about his stability, judgment, and mental sharpness," the report said.
Over the past months, Trump has gone on wild posting sprees overnight on TruthSocial, most recently a 50-post spree "strewn with dangerous or nonsensical misinformation." Before that, he appears to be all over the map with violent threats, but he then backs down the following morning. He has turned more hostile, snapping at reporters that they're "stupid" or "ugly." For Democrats, he's using words like "treasonous" or "seditious."
Meanwhile, his physicality has appeared to have taken a turn. He has been photographed with his feet and legs seriously swollen, crammed into his small shoes. The deep purple bruises on both his hands are now noticeably covered with makeup. He's also "appearing to fall asleep in public, sometimes twice in one week," wrote Lemire.
Unlike Biden, Trump, in some ways, has managed to inoculate himself from questions about his increasingly erratic behavior since he's always been erratic.
"But as Trump has aged, he’s becoming a purer, less filtered version of himself. Because the changes are less obvious, they’ve drawn less attention. For now, at least," he said. It's clear that he's slowed down, however, with rallies that went from almost weekly to nonexistent. Meanwhile, the White House has promised that Trump will begin traveling. That hasn't manifested over the last year. His schedule is filled with "executive time," which his staff calls his morning spent watching cable news and posting about it on social media.
Once he does make it out of executive time, "Trump’s remarks continue to feature many of his longtime hallmarks—disdain for scripts, a disregard for time, mixing up names and facts, and an impulse to say whatever pops into his head," the reporter continued.
One poll released last week showed that 59 percent of Americans think Trump lacks the mental sharpness needed to navigate the country. It doesn't much matter to Republican lawmakers in Congress, the report continued. They continue to defend Trump at all costs.
Lemire said that when Biden was in office, aides would push back on questions about the president's mental capacity. Now it appears the people defending Trump's acuity are members of Congress. In the case of Biden, reports spread. Those treating Trump the same appear to only be alternative media rather than cable news outlets.
It isn't a new concern. Lemire recalled Richard Nixon's drinking problems, Franklin D. Roosevelt's polio, Woodrow Wilson's debilitating stroke and Reagan's Alzheimer's Disease.
Trump’s age and apparent decline are no longer subtle the reporter described, and they are increasingly impossible to ignore. But unlike the scrutiny Biden faced, the questions around Trump’s mental sharpness and fitness for office are being shrugged off by the very Republicans who would once have made them a front-page crisis under any Democratic president.