A Fox News host said that Donald Trump’s age shouldn’t be a topic of concern heading into the 2024 presidential election, suggesting that the former president is somehow ageing at a “different rate” than his likely Democratic challenger, US President Joe Biden.
Host Dana Perino made the off-the-cuff remark on the cable news network on Tuesday during a segment where she was interviewing Fox contributor Kellyanne Conway about the 45th president’s much-anticipated plans to announce his third bid for the White House, something that he’d teased more seriously throughout the fall in the lead-up to the midterms.
“Hopefully TODAY will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our Country!” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social in the early hours of Tuesday, hours before his 9pm ET announcement was scheduled to be aired from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Age came up during Ms Conway’s Tuesday segment after Ms Perino cited a tweet from former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, where she highlighted how critics of Mr Biden’s age – who is currently 79 – would be wise to remember that the GOP frontrunner for 2024, Mr Trump, is also fast approaching the octogenarian club.
“Just throwing out there. For everyone who is arguing the reason @POTUS shouldn’t run again is because of his age…you know Donald Trump is 76 right?” Ms Psaki, now working for MSNBC, tweeted on Monday.
While the facts were on full display, that being that the former US president is about three and a half years younger than the current commander-in-chief, Ms Perino brushed off the figures by suggesting that age could be measured in terms outside literal numbers.
“Eh, I don’t know — everybody ages at a different rate,” the Fox News host said to her guest, before moving to her next point with the transition, “So, we can maybe set that aside.”
While Fox News’ suggestion that the ex-president is ageing in a way that can’t be measured by the number of trips he takes around the sun, Ms Perino is hardly the first one to argue that a president’s capabilities shouldn’t be judged based solely on a number.
Back in October, the current US president argued during an interview on MSNBC that his age – which will, as of 20 November, graduate the president to the octogenarian club – shouldn’t be what voters judge him on, but rather his “energy”.
“In terms of my energy level, in terms of how much I’m able to do, I think people should look and say — can he still have the same passion for what he’s doing?” Mr Biden said last month, adding to remarks he’d made the week before where he said it was his “intention” to run again in 2024.
If re-elected to office, Mr Biden would become the oldest president in US history, as he would finish his second term at 86 years old. Mr Trump, should he announce his plans to make a third attempt for the highest office in the country and win, would be, by comparison, 82 years old on 20 January 2029.
For his part, Mr Biden has acknowledged that his plans for making a go for re-election are not set in stone, as he told interviewers in the same MSNBC spot last month that the election is still two years off and he could either “get a disease tomorrow” or even “drop dead”.
For now, however, he maintains that he’s in good health and so long as that fact remains true, he sees no issue with his age.
“I’m in good health. All my, everything physically about me is still functioning well, so you know, and mentally too,” Mr Biden added.
Age has proven to be both a hot button and bipartisan issue in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, as even the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post recently took a swipe at the president they previously endorsed in 2020 by instead championing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the GOP’s “young star” while Mr Trump was panned as a “Trumpty Dumpty”.
For Mr Biden, the calls of concern around his age have been coming from within his own party in recent months.
In July, the New York Times published a Times/Siena College poll which showed that 64 per cent of the Democratic voters surveyed believed the party should nominate a different candidate for president in 2024. And of that group, 33 per cent cited Mr Biden’s age as their primary reason, while a separate 32 per cent cited his job performance during his first term.
