Many say the age issue is a problem for Joe Biden or Donald Trump: Voters should not worry about Joe Biden’s or Donald Trump’s advanced ages, experts say. Both men are in remarkably good health for their respective ages. At 80 and 77, respectively, the two men are the oldest competitors for the presidency in history.
Social Security Administration data shows that Biden has outlived 59% of men born his age cohort, while Trump has outlived 47% based on data for those born in the 1940s, according to The Washington Post.
Both men maintain grueling schedules and have received clean bills of health from their physicians.
“I don’t think, unless something dramatic comes out during the campaign, that age will be a major factor,” Steven N. Austad, who studies healthy aging at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told The Post.
Voters Think Joe Biden More Impacted By Age
Although both men are elderly, voters perceive that Biden has aged in a worse way than Trump due to his public verbal misstatements and stumbles.
An April Washington Post poll found that only 1 in 3 Americans think that Biden has the mental sharpness and acuity needed for his office. In contrast, the poll found that 54% thought that the septuagenarian Trump had the mental fitness to be president a second time, and 64% thought he had the physical fitness for the job.
An NBC News poll conducted last month found that 55% of voters had “major concerns” about Biden’s health compared with 44% who had the same concern about Trump.
The Washington Post notes that it contacted four experts on aging who said they believed that both Trump and Biden would be able to carry out the duties of the presidency in a second term between 2025 and 2029.
Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term and Trump would be 83.
“Socioeconomic status and education are huge predictors of cognitive function,” Morgan Levine, founding principal investigator of Altos Labs in San Diego, told The Post. Environmental and behavioral aspects are better predictors for longevity, she said.
Biden’s mother lived to be 88 and his father lived until 93 after a 5-year battle with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Trump’s exercise is limited beyond his rounds of golf.
Joe Biden, Trump Camps Talk Up Their Bosses’ Energy
Both Joe Biden and Trump have proven they can keep up with the rigors of their expected roles despite their ages, representatives from both of their camps say.
“As President Biden displayed in Helsinki — strengthening our national security instead of undermining it — his experience, drive, and values have rebuilt the alliances the last administration tore apart,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Because of those same qualities, President Biden transformed the economic freefall he inherited into the strongest recovery in the world.”
On Trump’s side, his campaign says he is more vigorous than the rest of the Republican field, which is decades younger than he is.
“President Trump is running laps around everyone and has exponentially more energy than the entire field combined,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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