Of all the themes of the 2024 campaign, perhaps none is as repetitive, subtle and sticky as President Joe Biden’s age issue. He 81. It Top of mind for many American voters. It’s a go-to topic of discussion whenever Biden makes a public appearance or address. And it has received its fair share of coverage, especially in the mainstream political press The New York Times.
But Donald Trump is also quite old. He turned 78 on Friday. Until Biden was elected, Trump held the record for the oldest person elected to the presidency. And he has a long track record of flobs, gaffes and misguided approaches that mirror many of Biden’s anxiety-inducing moments.
And yet, American voters across the political spectrum don’t seem as concerned with Trump’s age as they are with Biden’s. Only three years separate them, but almost every poll that asks voters whether they are worried shows a consistent gap in public opinion.
Take the New York Times/Siena College Poll Released in March. When asked whether Trump and Biden were “too old to be an effective president,” 42 percent of respondents said they either “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed that Trump was. Nearly three-quarters — 73 percent of respondents — said the same about Biden.
It’s a dynamic that, understandably, greatly frustrates Democrats. They argue that the three-year age gap between Trump and Biden has been held up as equally damaging that Trump is an extremist who tried to steal the last presidential election.
But this raises an obvious question: why? Why does the public seem fascinated by Biden’s age, but rarely talk about Trump’s?
This is one of those questions that is difficult to answer quantitatively, but I think it can be boiled down to a few theories. Some of this can be explained by Trump’s nature, some by media criticism, and some by simply looking at the two men.
Theory 1: Trump’s age is already baked into the public’s perception of him
After nearly a decade of Donald Trump playing a central role in our politics, opinions about him as a person have crystallized in many Americans’ minds — and he hasn’t really changed that much over the years.
Perhaps we’ve gotten used to his antics and verbal tics — explosion and bitsThe weird capitalization in the tweets, the random tone of his speech, the excess of it Run on sentence. We’ve seen it in two presidential campaigns before. Why should we start thinking differently about all this now?
So when he mixed up He is the name of the city, when he wrong pronunciation “Hummus” as “Hamas” and when he wrongly Referring to the Prime Minister of Hungary as the President of Turkey, it’s not about Trump getting old, it’s about Trump being weird.
The same isn’t true of Biden — whom many millennials and Genners may remember as a sharp, off-the-cuff everyman politician whose retail politics and banners were a hallmark of the Obama years. Even the Biden of the 2020 primary season seemed more touchy-feely than the president running for re-election today. And the public has gotten to know a different kind of Biden during his presidency.
Additionally, partisanship is a hell of a drug — especially when it comes to Trump. If you dislike Trump, his aging and erratic behavior in public addresses aren’t important factors in deciding whether you start liking him or thinking less of him. His age isn’t the thing that’s driving you away from him or the main reason you can’t support him—everything else about him (his authoritarian tendencies, his policy stances, the company he keeps).
At the same time, if you really like Trump, his age and how it shows in his odd behavior are probably not relevant to your decision to support him in 2024, or the point you want to discuss when explaining, describing, or justifying. Not relevant to him. Reasons why you still support him. His accomplishments in office, the tear-it-all-down movement he represents, and his promises for a second term are.
Public surveys by Pew Research provide some additional evidence for this. they found Sharp partisan divides On the question of age and media attention with both candidates.
In these surveys, Democrats seem quite concerned about how the media treats Biden and Trump on the question of age. Republicans, meanwhile, don’t seem to mind age so much when it comes to Trump.
Theory 2: Media coverage of Trump and Biden follows different criteria
The media, though fragmented, can still have a great impact on the national conversation. This is especially true when it comes to how they cover presidential candidates and politicians, and is evident in the question of age.
News organizations and individual journalists have to make editorial decisions about what to cover if Trump or Biden dies. When it comes to covering Trump, they have plenty to choose from. On any given day, it seems, the former president is:
- Embattled in legal trouble, having been charged with various state or federal crimes (classified documents, hush money, attempting to decertify the 2020 election), being removed for those charges, actually at trial, or — most recently — convicted by a jury of 34 felonies Pleaded guilty to;
- Saying something inflammatory in a speech or social media post (that he wants to be “Dictator“that he will”forgiveness“The rebels, the immigrants”The blood of our country is poisonous“Or claiming that Nancy Pelosi’s daughter told her that she and Pelosi were meant to be.”together”);
- dubious figures with campaigns or fundraisers who talk like fire;
- or declaring a position on an issue, such as potentially endorsing a National abortion banand then Walk it back when it seems Politically expedient.
And much more. She has a lot of material to work with that just goes beyond her age — Awesome content, I’m scared. And that’s not often the case when it comes to the highly orchestrated operations of the Biden campaign and the White House.
In fact, the opposite is often true, almost by design. Biden’s pitch for the presidency was to eliminate drama Bring back the boring in the name efficiency. And on the policy front, the president and congressional Democrats have accomplished a lot, as we’ve covered here at Vox. But if you’re a political reporter, if you’re used to covering symbolism, tradition, palace intrigue, or internal dynamics. Historically Pores insulation The White House?
Campaigning, likewise, is a Less is the matter. Biden has visited battleground states to speak directly Local audience And touts his administration’s accomplishments, but he still chooses to publish content on social media and run scores of ads The primary way To reach the voters. It’s no surprise that the brightest, most eye-catching moments of his presidency were his State of the Union addresses, when he also managed to show strength and wit, reminding people that he’s still got it.
And it’s basically always been the opposite for Trump, whose every thought (and every thought of his advisers) is communicated to the media. In 2018, Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon had a name for this strategy: “Flood[ing] Zone with shit.”
In other words, the media doesn’t have much to cover when it comes to Trump. His beat reporters have plenty to work with because he always makes news; There is also the option of going back to the age of Biden more often than not, when Biden is beating up reporters when he’s not making news.
Biden also can’t change his age, and so it can always be a news story. And it also creates a bit of a feedback loop of incentives, as voters say they care about her age, creating demand for more stories about her age, increasing concern about her age, and so on.
Theory 3: Visuals matter, and Trump just doesn’t look, act, or present the same old Biden
Two videos that went viral the week of Trump’s birthday show another explanation for why we don’t really discuss Trump’s age:
The the first Comes from a White House celebration commemorating Juneteenth. As singers and musicians perform on the White House’s South Lawn and Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff sing and dance, Biden smiles for a few seconds before his body stiffens and the smile fades. His gaze drifted to the side before he caught the attention of the audience members. “No one has a home” Read the Fox News headline.
The the second A collaboration between Trump and wrestler/influencer Logan Paul came from Trump’s campaign account on X and TikTok. In that video, Paul and Trump literally face off in front of a championship belt, like two boxers do before a match. They stare at each other for a few seconds before smiling and hugging.
Both videos represent the asymmetric nature of Biden’s and Trump’s public appearances: Biden, as chief executive, is (correctly) called for public appearances outside the carefully manicured environment of campaign events. And while sometimes it’s been good (like his SOTU), it’s also paved the way for some Cruise-inducing moments: He’s stepping on Air Force One, he’s shuffling on Marine One, he’s swinging at public events, he’s sloppy. Doing his words while talking.
Trump, on the other hand, can hand-pick his moments in front of large crowds and spectators. Sure, he goes off on tangents about electrocution, wind turbines and teleprompters, but as we discussed above, that boils down to Trump being Trump. Instead, we see clips of her going about it fairly naturally — like in a “just guys being friends”-style clip with Logan Paul, or in a way that makes you laugh instead of bawling your eyes out, like she does in her strange dance or funny Body movements.
In short, both candidates have a lot of fluff and fog. But while Biden is interpreted as a sign of advanced age, Trump gets away with being seen as just weird.
