Donald Trump, 80, is already not a fan of birthdays. But an already fraught day was made worse when those close to him drew attention to his increasingly frequent public lapses.
The president’s birthday on Sunday coincided with a New York Times report detailing interactions with Trump in which he had a few mental slip-ups. His allies recounted instances in which Trump, the oldest president ever inaugurated, forgot someone’s name and described him as more tired than usual.
Notably, some have drawn more attention to the fact that Trump appears to fear old age himself.
“He’s really uncomfortable with it,” Tucker Carlson, an ally who broke with Trump in recent months, said of the president’s age, according to the Times.
That sentiment rang true earlier this week when Trump wished Dr. Mehmet Oz, who turned 66 on Wednesday, a happy birthday.
“I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday,” he said. “You don’t have to wish me a happy birthday, because I’m not happy about that birthday. It’s a number that I never thought really too much about. It’s not a number I like, but I’m here nonetheless.”
Carlson, in an interview with the Times, also characterized Trump’s obsession with building a highly contested $400 million ballroom at the White House as “an older man building a monument to himself.”
While White House insiders revealed Trump’s lapses to the Times under the shroud of anonymity, publicly they have done anything but.
“President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the last administration when Democrats and the legacy media intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle has previously told the Daily Beast.
In other instances, such as when the dark, purplish bruises on Trump’s hands are in full view, the White House has offered explanations including excessive handshaking.
Still, some things have grown more difficult to conceal. The president was recently examined by some 22 specialists at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
A Washington Post analysis of public statements by the president’s personal medical team found that the figure was nearly double the number of physicians involved in his last physical. Last year’s checkup saw him examined by a comparatively meager 14 doctors.
The figure of 22 is also the highest number of specialists present at a single examination of a president, the Post reported.
