The president, now 79, is the oldest person ever elected to the Oval Office.
President Donald Trump lashed out at The New York Times for a story this week that pointed to his advanced age and a diminished White House schedule, extolling what he sees as his administration’s wins and accusing the publication of unfair coverage.
“[T]he Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite,” he wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. “They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE.”
Trump, now 79, is the oldest person ever elected to the Oval Office. The Times report pointed to several examples in which Trump’s increased age has made this term different from his first.
The president holds fewer public events than he did at this point in his first term, the paper found. And he maintains a shorter public schedule, with appearances regularly taking place between noon and 5 p.m. The story also highlighted an event in October in which Trump appeared to nod off in the Oval Office and recalled an MRI scan Trump revealed he’d undergone in October.
“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!” the president boasted on social media.
Trump’s post escalates his long-running feud with the Times, which the president has regularly asserted is “failing.” He sued the publication for $15 billion in September, accusing it of being “a fullthroated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.” A judge threw out the suit just several days later, but Trump refiled an amended complaint in mid-October.
“The Times’s reporting is accurate and built on first hand reporting of the facts,” Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for The New York Times, said in a statement. “Name-calling and personal insults don’t change that, nor will our journalists hesitate to cover this administration in the face of intimidation tactics like this.”