Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday he wants to institute a mandatory retirement age of 75 for the president and across branches of government, a pipe dream of a call from the potential White House hopeful that would bar him from serving a second term as president.
“You’re 75 years old: done,” the former Chicago mayor and ambassador to Japan said Wednesday at a Center for American Progress event. “And that would be in the legislative branch, it’d be in the executive branch — including the Cabinet — and it’d be also in the Supreme Court, and all the federal courts.”
Emanuel, who is 66, would be 69 when sworn into office if he runs for and wins the 2028 presidential contest. He would be 73 at the start of his second term, and would, by his own standard, be unable to serve all four years. He acknowledged this when pressed by POLITICO at a Christian Science Monitor roundtable Wednesday afternoon.
“I know where I am in my age. Of course it would apply to me,” Emanuel said. “You can’t say ‘here’s what I want to do to change Washington, one of the things I want to do’ — but I get an exemption because I bought it beforehand.’”
His standard would make Donald Trump, 79, ineligible to continue serving as president. And it would have barred Joe Biden, under whom Emanuel served as ambassador to Japan, from serving his single term. It would also impact the 17 senators and 45 members of the House who are currently 75 or older.
“You can’t serve in the armed forces, you can’t serve in private sector jobs” at 75, Emanuel said. “Go work on your golf swing, it’s not that good to begin with.”
Emanuel is reigniting a debate that raged throughout the last presidential election as Biden, then 81, and Trump, then 78, each sought a second term — and as questions about Biden’s mental and physical stamina crescendoed. And it’s simmered for years on Capitol Hill as lawmakers confront mental decline and even death within their ranks.
Age limits are popular with voters who have balked in recent years at the advancing ages of the nation’s presidential contenders, lawmakers and Supreme Court justices. Roughly two-thirds of Americans support age limits for federal elected officials and the Supreme Court, polls show.
Emanuel, a former representative, said he would push for legislation to set the limit rather than attempt a constitutional amendment. (The Constitution sets a minimum age for members of Congress but not a maximum, and establishes no limits for the Supreme Court.) It’s not clear whether that legislation itself would be constitutional — and could be a tough sell in a Congress where the median age for senators is 64.
Emanuel framed the age limit as part of a broader call for “comprehensive ethics, lobbying [and] anti-corruption reform” across the federal government that he said should include a crackdown on lawmakers and judges taking gifts and stock trading. The veteran Democratic strategist said his party should be hammering that message as part of a midterms platform that also includes raising the minimum wage and instituting a bill of rights for ratepayers.
“You have a president of the United States, in my view, that has expanded, deepened the swamp. Our job is to drain the swamp as Democrats,” Emanuel said, turning Trump’s trademark phrase against him. “There’s not a day that goes by that you don’t read a story about either his family, [Commerce Secretary Howard] Lutnick’s family or [Special Envoy Steve] Witkoff’s family making money.”
Emanuel’s choice of 75 may have been influenced by his brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, a former White House adviser and oncologist who wrote in 2014 that he did not want to live past 75. In that piece, he wrote that his view “drives my brothers crazy.”
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