President Trump is giving old people a bad name.
Think about it. In June he’ll be 80, only the second president in American history to reach that age in office. Right now the record-holder is, yeah, Joe Biden. But if Trump makes it to the end of Term 2, he’ll beat Biden for the Oldest Ever title.
If you want to dwell on the positive side of age and our chief executives, we really ought to start with Jimmy Carter, who finished his White House career in 1981 but continued trying to be a useful citizen for several decades. He lived to be 100 and won a Nobel Prize for his humanitarian work late in life. He helped the poor, by working to eradicate — and largely succeeding in eradicating — Guinea worm and by drawing attention to the need for low-income housing with a lot of sawing and hammering. You could have a wide range of opinions about Carter’s success in the White House, but he definitely had the postpresidency, um, nailed.
In his Presidential Walk of Fame exhibit in the White House, Trump does praise Carter’s after-White House efforts — while dissing his time in office. But that Walk of Fame is an excellent example of how at almost 80, Trump is still vigorously competing for the title of Worst Ever. When he isn’t spending his time excoriating his immediate predecessor or renaming buildings after himself or making a deep, deep disaster out of every step of the crisis in Iran, Trump has been raking in a fortune for his family members by connecting them to an estimated $1.4 billion-plus in profits from enterprises ranging from cryptocurrencies to licensing the use of his name.
Want to talk a little about whether Trump is going to merge Oldest and Worst? Let’s not. If we focus on that, there’s a grave danger I’ll lead you into a lengthy contemplation of the fact that we’ve still got nearly three more years of the Trump White House. Don’t dwell on it. Really. Stop.
“Should we do it a fourth time?” our president mused on a recent trip to Iowa.
This, of course, is the Trump Theory of American History, in which he defeated Biden in 2020 and tried to rouse the country into revolution — or at least very messy riots — when rational public officials declared he’d lost.
Can you imagine Trump running again in 2028, when he’s on the way to 83? When younger people start shaking with terror, they should be reminded that smart senior citizens are equally horrified by powerful people who refuse to retire at a rational time. Plus he can’t really threaten us on that front. (Please, stop gnawing at your fingernails.) There’s still a two-term limit, set in the Constitution.
Unless, you know, he pushes for an age amendment and makes up a legend about the founders wanting to make sure any male under 100 had the right to run for the top job. And reminds the people of his charitable presidential deeds — such as pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters, a handful of football players and many other criminals.
As president, Trump has marched into old age as a hero of all the Americans who admire famous names in the Refusal to Leave category. Think about it. (Hey, just for a few minutes.) He beat Hillary Clinton, despite losing the popular vote. He refused to admit that Biden defeated him for re-election and tried to stage a coup. He failed at that but managed to take back the White House next time around, which Biden helped make happen by waiting so long to admit he was too old to run again.
And then, Trump told the world in a mass mailing, he completed the first year of his new term, during which he might well have accomplished “more than any president in the history of the country.”
Hope that’s clear, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington …
Well, there are lots of ways to make history. Are presidential scholars of the future going to regard Trump as the worst? Below James Buchanan, who failed to stop slavery or the Civil War? Or William Henry Harrison, who rejected arguments that he was too old to run, then died a month after his inauguration, leaving the country in the dreadful hands of John Tyler?
Let’s imagine how the other late-in-life presidents would regard Trump’s entry into the fold. We can’t say he’s giving them a bad name, since as a group, the gang doesn’t have all that terrific a rep to begin with.
But imagine a heavenly dinner party of old presidents through the ages. There’s Herbert Hoover, getting plaudits for managing to live to be 90, by colleagues who charitably ignore his starring role in the Great Depression.
There’s Ronald Reagan, who was a few days short of his 70th birthday when he was inaugurated, grinning while he contemplates his two terms and then 15 years as a cheerful retiree. (Well, mostly cheerful, until the last years, which were darkened by Alzheimer’s.)
“I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life,” he said in a goodbye letter to the nation. “I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.”
OK, he probably wasn’t imagining a President Trump at the time. But back to that oldest-presidents party. No matter how long they ended up living, if the guests at the party were all the age they were in office, a bunch would be just in their 60s. John Adams finished his one term when he was 65, sad at losing re-election to Thomas Jefferson but undoubtedly cheery at having had 25 postpresidential years, in which he’d see his son take the White House. And maybe he’d have some premonition that two centuries later, he’d be honored with a biographical television show.
Think there’ll ever be a Donald Trump TV series? What genre would it be? History, humor or horror?
Gail Collins, a contributing Opinion writer, worked for The Times for 30 years, as a member of the editorial board, as the editorial page editor and as an Opinion columnist from 2007 until 2025.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post Contemplating Trump at 80 appeared first on New York Times.
