Reporter Katy Tur has been up close and personal with Donald Trump for over a decade. We don’t envy her, but where other reporters have come and gone, she’s stuck around.
When she began covering Trump in 2015, he was a relatively sprightly 69-year-old. Now he’s pushing 80, and she says it’s impossible to deny that age isn’t taking its toll on him.
Speaking to The Daily Beast Podcast, Tur explained: “He is different than he was. He doesn’t have the same amount of energy”. A longtime observer of Trump’s speeches, Tur says she’s noticed a definite change in the way he addresses crowds: “He’s not as coherent as he used to be. He’s always been not entirely coherent. But it’s different now. He’s slower. His speech is slower.”
As Tur underlines, this is precisely what we should expect from a man about to become an octogenarian:
“There are questions about his cognitive ability. Sometimes he slurs his words. Sometimes his speeches make even less sense than they used to. … He’s different. I mean, he’s what? He’s 79 years old. He’s about to be 80. Anybody at that age is going to start slowing down.”
The problem for Trump is that he heavily criticized Joe Biden for succumbing to the ravages of aging, never failing to point out any cognitive slips or elder moments the former president experienced in public. As many pointed out at the time, Trump’s criticism of Biden for being too old to be president would inevitably come back to haunt him.
As such, Trump is taking all of this personally and, like the Emperor with no clothes, insisting that his nonsense rambling speeches, dozing off during meetings, and increasingly doddering gait are just in our imagination. The White House responded to Tur’s claims with typical denial, saying that Trump is the most “energetic” president “in modern American history” and lashing out at Tur for saying what she sees:
“Katy Tur has long suffered from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Tur is a Democrat activist, not a reporter and should not be taken seriously whatsoever.”
A second opinion
But even MAGA-friendly outlets are noticing that the upbeat Trump of his first presidency is long gone. Comedian Shane Gillis – no major critic of Trump – was forced to admit that the president “seems a little slower than usual” and that while “he’s definitely not at ‘Biden brains’ yet … he’s circling the drain.”
As for Trump’s own take on his health?
“There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (“That was aced”) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now!”
Uh sure thing, boss. Now we’re just going to clear out of the Oval Office so you can have some executive nap time. We’ll send in a Secret Service agent to bring you a cup of coffee in an hour or so…
