President Donald Trump on Sunday will become the second octogenarian to occupy the White House – and his admirers told The Post he still has plenty of spring in his step.
“At least to date, he has seemed to utterly defy age,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), 55, who ran against Trump for president a decade ago.
“I don’t know where he gets the energy that he displays, but he is up early in the morning and late at night,” he added.
In a chamber where Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, 92, is the senior-most Republican and third in line to the presidency, Republicans who work closely with Trump insisted age is nothing but a number.
“He calls me at sometimes 2 o’clock in the morning,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).
The 74-year-old lawmaker quickly added: “I mean, just because you’re 80 doesn’t mean you’re falling apart. For some people it does — but other people are fine.”
“Age is relative,” agreed former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), 82, who served three terms in the Senate – including two years alongside Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-Miss.), who retired from the chamber at 100.
“I knew people who were senile at 40, and I knew people in their 70s that were contributing members of the Congress. It depends on the individual, and you have to judge an individual not by the chronological age, but by their ability, and some are great at 80, and some are not so great at 40.”
And he’s not slowing down, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 82, a longtime Trump advisor who drew some life advice from the president. “President Trump, in the Kissinger tradition, has gained in stamina as he has gotten older. He is so interested in the wide range of things he is achieving that he has no time to get older,” he said.
“His life invigorates him and fits what we now know about longevity. If you have a big goal, like what you are doing and have friends you live longer, healthier, and with more energy. All that fits President Trump.”
Trump keeps a vigorous schedule, regularly fielding questions from reporters during marathon press events and posting on Truth Social about war and peace during odd hours.
“If there’s one thing I know about President Trump, it’s that nothing slows him down,” said Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), the former White House physician who tended to Trump after Thomas Crooks shot at him in Butler, Pennsylvania and wounded his right ear.
The president plans to spend his birthday at a UFC fight organized on the South Lawn of the White House before jetting to France for the annual G7 meeting.
Eldest son Donald Trump, Jr. and his new wife Bettina, son Eric and wife Lara Trump, daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner all were set to join him for the bouts.
Democrats are relishing the opportunity, for a change, to poke at the age of the other party’s standard bearer.
Former White House spokesman Andrew Bates questioned Trump’s memory regarding inflation, despite Bates’ ex-boss, former President Joe Biden, delivering a 2024 debate performance so bad his wife thought he was having a stroke.
“But you have to give it to him that a White House ballroom is the ultimate senior arts and crafts project,” he quipped.
Trump has been fatalistic when speaking after numerous attempts on his life.
“I wasn’t worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world,” he said after Cole Thomas Allen allegedly opened fire at the White House Correspondents Dinner in April. “It’s not a number I like, but I’m here nevertheless,” he said in a video posted Thursday by Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.
But if he frets about aging, he can turn to White House Physician Dr. Sean Barbabella’s memo after his latest visit to Walter Reed Medical Center.
It proclaimed him to be in “excellent health” and estimated his cardiac age as “approximately 14 years younger than his chronological age.”
