Donald Trump is the oldest individual ever elected president, and his age caused frequent concern about his physical and mental fitness during his first year back in office. However, a new analysis from The i Paper on Tuesday suggested that blaming his problems on his age "lets him off the hook" for his real "deficiencies" as a human.
In the piece, celebrated journalist James Ball argued that, despite the emerging concerns about the elderly holding high office, age has not been a primary factor in the success or failure of a president. Trump, he noted, only lost an election in 2020 to a candidate, Joe Biden, who was older than him. Despite later concerns about Biden's age and mental fitness in 2024, Ball wrote that "few honest critics could reasonably say his presidency was a disaster," as his administration "passed major legislation, invested in infrastructure, and generally delivered on its agenda."
With that in mind, Ball further suggested that "most of Trump’s deficiencies as a human being have little to do with age."
"Trump is both an ignorant and an incurious president who seems to understand little of how government works, or even how normal Americans live," Ball wrote. "In speeches, he has appeared to confuse the concept of asylum – providing a safe haven to refugees – with asylums that treat the mentally ill. He seems unaware of how tariffs work. He has repeatedly claimed to know nothing about the criminals he routinely pardons during his term."
Trump's ignorance and laziness as a world leader were exemplified by reports during his first term claiming that he would "simply not read intelligence briefings," with written information best communicated to him in a single page or less, with bullet points. He has also been described as intensely focused on consuming television, with staffers reportedly trying to get ideas across to him through Fox News.
Attributing these shortcomings to age, Ball argued, "is to let him off the hook" and "to simultaneously demean older adults" who remain sharper and more curious than Trump in their old age.
"Almost all of the worst traits he displays as President come from his longstanding character," Ball wrote. "It is true that he has got more extreme with time, and less filtered – but this could have any number of causes. While it could be age (it is not uncommon to become less filtered as we get older), it could just as easily be that as he’s spent longer in power, and surrounded himself with extremists, his worst instincts have come to the fore."
