Donald Trump celebrates his 78th birthday on Friday, an opportunity for Americans to assess the physical and mental fitness of the Republican candidate, those who are rather accustomed to commenting on that of his rival, President Joe Biden.
Whether the Republican billionaire or the Democratic leader wins the November 5 election, either would become the oldest American president to take the oath of office.
Donald Trump celebrated his birthday with a big gathering on Friday in a gigantic ballroom, very close to Mar-a-Lago, his luxurious residence in Florida.
After a “happy birthday” sung by the crowd, a birthday cake installed near his lectern, Donald Trump, during an hour of speech, used his usual incendiary rhetoric to target migrants and especially his opponent Joe Biden who, according to the republican, “falls asleep at every event”.
“Happy 78e birthday, Donald,” Joe Biden said earlier, mockingly, in a tweet.
“From one old gentleman to another, trust me: age, ultimately, doesn’t matter that much. This election, on the other hand, yes,” he wrote, before listing their program differences on abortion or the fight against global warming.
However, the polls are clear: many more Americans believe that the current president is too old for a second term than Donald Trump.
Joe Biden, 81, objectively shows recurring signs of fatigue: his gait is increasingly stiff, his moments of confusion are numerous. The videos of the American president, walking away, haggard, from a group of G7 leaders, smiling into space, stumbling, stuttering, are also shared massively on social networks.
The fact remains that in recent months, Donald Trump has confused the names of several cities and leaders, alerted to the fact that the world was heading towards a second, and not third, World War and launched into numerous tirades disjointed.
Gaffes, tremors
Thursday, during a closed-door exchange with Republican elected officials, he would have described Milwaukee, a strategic city in many respects for the American elections, as “horrible”, sparking a barrage of criticism and questions.
Are these repeated blunders, the videos of him clinging to a railing to avoid slipping, trembling while drinking a glass of water, concrete illustrations of a decline in the former president?
It is, ultimately, impossible to say.
But these sequences are a hit with Joe Biden’s team, not dissatisfied with shining the spotlight, from time to time, on the age of the other candidate.
For Donald Trump’s birthday, the Democratic president’s camp published a press release on Friday accompanied by a large-format and very unflattering photo of the Republican sweating, with red cheeks and drawn features.
“Happy birthday Donald. You are a crook, a failure, an impostor and a threat to our democracy,” tackled James Singer, a spokesperson for Joe Biden’s campaign team, in this press release.
“Zombie”
These comments made the Trump camp jump, which in return described Joe Biden as “weak and incompetent”.
“It’s a brain-dead zombie,” said a spokesperson in a statement to AFP.
Debates around the age of American presidents are not new.
During Ronald Reagan’s second term, some observers were already wondering about the deterioration of his intellectual abilities.
Former US President Jimmy Carter himself sounded the alarm in a post in 1994, worrying about the “danger” posed to the United States by the possibility that a president’s abilities would be weakened by of a “neurological disease”.