Donald Trump inauguration 2025: As the oldest president ever sworn in, is his health up to the job?

Donald Trump and his MAGA backers relished deriding Joe Biden for his age, mocking his mistakes and questioning his mental acuity, but was it a case of pot, kettle, black?

Or, “Person, woman, man, camera, TV” to quote Trump’s famous memory test of 2020 that provided so much fodder for late night TV hosts.

He is set to eclipse Biden by a few months as the oldest president ever sworn in — six months before his 79th birthday — and already questions have been raised about his own capabilities and how that might affect his time at the White House over the coming four years.

President Joe Biden will leave office aged 82. His age, stamina, and “cognitive decline” were all key areas Mr Trump tried to weaponise in his fight to win his way back back into power.

But now, having successfully seen off 59-year-old challenger Kamala Harris and making history as the oldest president, he is likely to find the shoe firmly on the other foot.

During the campaign in October more than 230 doctors, nurses and health care professionals from the ‘Doctors for Harris’ group penned an open letter calling on Mr Trump to release his medical records, arguing that he should be transparent about his health “given his advancing age.”

“Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity,” they wrote.

“In the limited opportunities we can examine his behavior, he’s providing a deeply concerning snapshot.”

Rambling and confused

Mr Trump’s public appearances are long and rambling and he regularly confuses timelines, events and people.

During the campaign at a forum in North Carolina, he seemed to have no recollection of meeting with a severely injured veteran and his family. The veteran’s wife noted that “you visited with him many times” and “you just saw him this summer”.

Mr Trump also confused Republican rival Nikki Haley with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He also mixed up the location of a major military base and mistakenly said that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán led Turkey.

At a news conference riddled with false and misleading statements in August, Trump recalled riding as a passenger in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown when it was forced to make an emergency landing.

Brown later said he had never shared a helicopter with Trump. Instead, it was likely a Los Angeles city councilman, who is also Black, who shared the rocky chopper ride.

At a rally in Wisconsin, he described the the US as country as a “third-world hellhole”. He then told his audience, “Remember, there’s a hat that’s made that sells like crazy,” before interrupting himself to comment on a fly.

“Oh there’s a fly, I wonder where the fly came from. See, two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly,” Trump said.

Anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project funded ads that attacked the former President’s age and mental capabilities. One called One Old Man’ described Trump as “weak, impotent, forgetful, mentally declining fast”.

Medical record

Mr Trump, a keen golfer, resisted calls to release full updated medical records during the campaign.

Instead, he pointed to “voluntarily released” updates from his personal physician, as well as detailed reports from Dr Ronny Jackson, who treated him after the first assassination attempt.

The letter from his personal physician, Bruce Aronwald, dated from September 2023 said he had found Trump’s overall physical health to be “excellent”.

“His physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional.”

He also noted Mr Trump had lost weight through an improved diet and exercise.

A statement from Mr Trump’s campaign said doctors had concluded he was in perfect and excellent health to be Commander in Chief.

There’s no requirement that candidates release health data. But presidential nominees traditionally disclose medical records voluntarily given the demands of the job, particularly if there are concerns about their age.

The average life expectancy for a male in the US is 74.8 years, according to the Centre for Disease Control.

In 2008, Republican nominee John McCain opened more than 1000 pages of medical documents for the public to examine. At 72, he would have been the oldest president elected to a first term.

Facing scrutiny over his advanced age in 2019, the then-77-year-old Biden released a three-page note from his doctor.

‘Cognitive decline’

In an interview with Fox News in 2020, Mr Trump claimed he had aced an exam testing his cognitive abilities, using it to defend his mental fitness to hold office and repeat his assertion, without evidence, that Mr Biden was suffering significant cognitive decline.

He has repeatedly claimed that doctors were amazed by his ability to recall a simple string of words: “Person, woman, man, camera, TV”.

“Joe should take that test because something is going on, and I say this with respect,” Trump said.

“I mean, (it’s) going to probably happen to all of us, right? You know, it’s going to happen. But we can’t take a chance of it happening,” Mr Trump said, adding that those who become president “need stamina. You need physical health, and you need mental health.”

Since then Mr Trump hasn’t shied away from people questioning his mental fitness, instead poking fun at critics who declare him “cognitively impaired” because he “mispronounced a word”.

“They say, He’s cognitively impaired!” Trump joked. “No, I’ll let you know when I will be. I will be someday — we all will be someday. I’ll be the first to let you know.”

- with AP