On Saturday, someone bidding to be the oldest man ever to be elected President of the USA nearly met his maker. Fortunately the would-be assassin’s bullet did no more than clip the ear of 78-year-old Donald J Trump.
And the intended victim could be heard giving a clear order to the pack of Secret Service agents who were urging him: ‘We’ve got to move, we’ve got to move’. ‘Wait,’ said Trump.
He was determined to seize the moment. Getting to his feet, he began punching the air vigorously, creating an image — bloodied but unbowed, with the Stars and Stripes in the background — that might, on its own, guarantee that, this November, he is elected President (again).
That means Trump would become, during his second spell in the White House, older than Biden now is (81). Yet no one expresses concern that he will be ‘too old’. If anything, the fear of Trump’s opponents is that he will be too dominating and act with demonic energy.
This question of ‘age’ has overshadowed the race for the Presidency since Biden’s performance in the first debate between the two candidates. The current occupant of the White House shocked viewers with his confusion, passages of complete gibberish and, at times, a glassy-eyed, slack-jawed appearance suggestive of senility.
Determined to seize the moment, Trump began punching the air vigorously, creating an image that might, on its own, guarantee that, this November, he is elected President, writes DOMINIC LAWSON
For Biden, this is absolutely not just about age, even though it is the word everyone uses. It is about infirmity and acute mental degeneration
On the other side, Donald Trump said countless things which were completely untrue — but he was lying with undiminished vigour.
It was too much for Biden’s champion in the Hollywood elite, George Clooney. Last week, he wrote a devastating article in the New York Times headlined: ‘I love Joe Biden. But we need a new nominee.’
Clooney described how, at a recent fundraising event he attended, ‘He was not even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate . . . Is it fair to point these things out? It has to be. This is about age. Nothing more.’
Wrong. This is absolutely not just about age, even though it is the word everyone uses. It is about infirmity. It is about acute mental degeneration. There are, or have been, plenty at Biden’s age still vigorous and intellectually focused, including in the political sphere.
To take a personal example: I have just looked up footage of my late father, Nigel Lawson, speaking at an Oxford Union debate in 2013, when he was the same age Biden is now.
First of all, my father did not have a single grey hair (I promise, this was entirely natural, unlike Trump’s coiffure). And he delivered a flawless speech in the chamber, only occasionally looking down at his notes.
My father had always been fortunate in his health — I don’t think he had spent a day in hospital before his ninth decade. This is very different from Joe Biden.
In February 1988, the then senator for Delaware suffered a near-catastrophic cerebral aneurysm. He was given the Last Rites and underwent nine hours of surgery.
It succeeded, against the odds; but three months later, Biden suffered a second aneurism (on the other side of his brain) requiring more major surgery.
As a result, the President has metallic clips on his cerebral arteries, which mean he can’t undergo an MRI scan, as the magnetic field could move the clips, with potentially fatal consequences.
Although Trump would become older than Biden at the end of a second term in office, concerns are expressed not that he will be ‘too old’ but too dominating
I wrote here about this medical history over two years ago. I was making the point, after Vladimir Putin sent his tanks towards Kyiv, that the fashionable commentary on the Russian president’s alleged mental state or ‘sickness’ was absurd, when the real concern should be about Biden’s capabilities.
And I quoted remarks, from a year before that — so, in 2021 — by Dr Greg Ganske, a former Congressman who had contrasted Biden’s mental state with the man he had sat next to at a lunch in 1997: ‘Witty and charming, with no stuttering or incomplete thoughts. It pains me greatly to see a decline in President Biden and it worries me.’
Dr Ganske quoted a neurosurgeon friend who referred to Biden’s two cerebral incidents and surgery from 1988: ‘It takes a toll and can show up later.’ Of Trump, Dr Ganske observed: ‘He is not senile and his brain is relatively sharp whether you like it or not.’ That is still true of Donald Trump at 78.
By the way, this obsession with ‘age’ rather than ability is behind Labour’s manifesto pledge to make members of the House of Lords retire during the parliament in which they reach 80.
Some of the most valuable members of the upper house are in their 80s. The fact that Sir Keir Starmer has just appointed the (very sharp) 81-year-old former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett a life peer shows how absurd this policy is.
As events in the U.S. are now demonstrating, what counts is acuity, not age.
Enjoy the honeymoon Sir Keir, while it lasts
To read the reports from the Press accompanying Sir Keir Starmer on his trip to the Nato shindig in Washington DC, you’d think it was an undiluted triumph for the new PM.
And they were also encouraged by President Zelensky’s reaction after his meeting with Starmer: the Ukrainian leader posted on Twitter/X that he had ‘learned about [Britain’s] permission to use Storm Shadow missiles against military targets in Russian territory.
We had the opportunity to discuss the practical implementation of this decision . . . I am grateful to the UK’.In his own comments, Starmer said the missiles were ‘for Ukraine to decide how to deploy’.
Despite reports that Starmer was strengthening our country’s commitment to Ukraine, it turned out there was no change from the policy under Rishi Sunak
Under our previous government Kyiv had been told they could be used only on Ukrainian territory (including Crimea). So, various pundits extolled Starmer’s strengthening of our country’s commitment to Ukraine’s struggle.
But then . . . a sudden reversal. It turned out there had been no change from the policy under Rishi Sunak: British defence officials briefed that Zelensky would have to ‘seek assurances elsewhere’ — presumably including Washington — before Ukraine could fire these missiles onto Russian territory, even for defensive purposes.
It’s not clear what went on here — whether Starmer didn’t understand what the true situation was, or Zelensky had misunderstood the British PM’s words. But it was a debacle, in terms of clarity of message, on a critical issue.
If something like this had happened in the dying days of the Sunak administration, there would have been a savaging from the media over ‘confusion at the heart of government’.Now: nothing.
This is the political honeymoon period for the new Prime Minister, so there is no appetite for criticism. That’s normal in such circumstances. Sir Keir should enjoy it while it lasts.
