Trump�s age has reshaped his campaign � and his staff is desperate to hide
it
The effects of the former president�s age are visible in every major
decision taken by his campaign.

�Old age should burn and rave at close of day,� wrote the Welsh poet Dylan
Thomas. �Rage, rage against the dying of the light.� If Donald Trump has
ever read that poem � an unlikely prospect, I think we can all agree � he
certainly isn�t living it. The former president has become a shadow of
himself in the home stretch, with the evidence of his flagging energy and
memory growing by the week.

At 78, Trump would be the oldest person ever elected to the presidency, so
it�s understandable that the issue of his age has been lurking at the edges
of his campaign since he announced his third run for the White House nearly
two years ago. It crept further into view when 81-year-old Joe Biden was
succeeded as the presumptive Democratic nominee by 59-year-old Kamala
Harris. On Saturday, Harris� campaign released her medical records,
�seeking to put the focus on Trump,� according to NBC News.

It�s not just you: He didn�t sound like this in 2016.

Trump�s age should be central to the closing stages of this race, not
because Harris wants it to be, but because there should be no debate
anymore over whether Trump�s age would affect his presidency. In truth, it
has already dramatically altered his campaign � and his staff is desperate
to pretend otherwise.

Not that anyone would blame his staff for trying to shelter Trump. Here is
a verbatim excerpt from his speech Thursday at the Detroit Economic Club:

Democrats don�t want voter ID. You know why? Because they wanna cheat.
They don�t wanna � I say, �Ohhh, they don�t wanna.� When I first � I
thought I was seeing things, I thought I was ... like, I didn�t hear that
when I first start this who � they�d say, �The Democrats will not approve
voter ID.�

It�s not just you: He didn�t sound like this in 2016. And at this critical
phase of the presidential race, the effects of Trump�s age are visible in
every major decision taken by his campaign.

Most obviously, the half-hearted gestures toward transparency about his
health seen in past campaigns have vanished, as have his boasts of acing
�cognitive tests.� Though Trump told CBS in August he�d be happy to release
his medical records, the only recent public information is a one-page
letter that emerged after the assassination attempt in July. That letter,
by his disgraced former personal physician, Rep. Ronny Jackson, describes
the bullet wound he received but has no other details about his medical
condition.

We don�t need Trump or his doctors to tell us the truth about his cognitive
abilities. His campaign�s strategic decisions tell us everything: He has
repeatedly demonstrated that he�s incapable of executing any plan or
maintaining any discipline. In a normal campaign, for example, a candidate
who had lost the previous presidential debate would leap at the chance for
a rematch closer to the election. But Trump has refused to do so, even when
Fox News offered to host. As Puck reported shortly after the September
debate, �within the campaign, there seems to be wide agreement that with
the race this tight, Trump can�t afford to lose another news cycle � and
therefore, they should prevent him from doing another debate.�
'Most dangerous person ever': Trump general reportedly warns he's 'fascist
to the core'
11:34

It�s one thing for staffers to fear the candidate would lose a second
debate. It�s unprecedented for them to assume he�ll lose. But that�s what
they think of his mental state.

Then there are Trump�s travel plans. In a typical campaign, the candidate
would be crisscrossing swing states from now to Election Day. But Trump �
who is on pace to hold fewer than a third of the rallies he held in 2016 �
is visiting states he has no chance of winning, such as Illinois and
California. According to CNN, a source �close to Trump� said that �Trump
has increasingly been fixated on this idea that his supporters in states
not viewed as crucial to the 2024 election deserve to have an opportunity
to see him.� Whatever Trump�s reason, his team hasn�t succeeded in
persuading him to adopt a more electoral-friendly approach.

At his age, there�s no point in trying to rein his brain in.

It�s also hard to believe that Trump�s increasingly violent, racist
rhetoric lines up with the message from his campaign strategists.
Immigration has been central to Trump�s pitch to voters since he first ran
for president. But it�s never been this central, even as Trump loses ground
on voters� top issue, the economy. His bigotry � saying Latino immigrants
disproportionately have �bad genes� � is more blatant than ever. And his
enthusiasm for authoritarian solutions � invoking the Alien Enemies Act,
which was the legal basis for Japanese Americans� incarceration during
World War II � is less guarded than ever.

Some of Trump�s advisers, according to Rolling Stone, oppose this turn.
They�d prefer he�d �play it safe.� But they�re powerless: His calls for
mass violence are uninhibited because he is uninhibited. And at his age,
there�s no point in trying to rein his brain in.
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Of course, Trump�s supporters don�t care that his own campaign does not
trust him to be a functional, competent executive. At this late stage, it�s
quite possible that Trump could emerge victorious in spite of himself.

But his age matters, both for the few truly undecideds left and for what
the electorate should expect from a potential Trump presidency. As chief
executive, Trump worked less than any other president. Should he return to
the White House, it�s reasonable to assume his age would limit him still
further. That in turn leaves more power for the unelected hangers-on around
him. Trump�s first term brought multiple attempted or real subversions of
democracy; his age guarantees a second term will bring even more.

And from there, no one will be going gently anywhere.
James Downie