Polls suggest the American public is increasingly concerned about Donald Trump‘s mental acuity and stamina. Trump made brutal attacks against his predecessor Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity a key part of his campaign for a second term in the White House.
The real-estate mogul blasted the 83-year-old after a series of embarrassing gaffes which led even Biden’s own Democratic allies to question his fitness for a second term, and Biden was ultimately forced to abandon hopes of running again. But since returning to office, Trump, 79, has increasingly faced similar questions about whether he’s still up to the job, with critics accusing the Republican firebrand of slowing down in his old age and declining mentally.
His opponents have pointed to verbal slips of his own, such as repeatedly calling Greenland ‘Iceland,’ his wild rebukes against established allies, and occasions when he was accused of falling asleep in meetings.
CNN collected a number of recent polls suggesting these concerns are shared by an increasingly large section of public, including many Republicans.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll put out on Tuesday in the run-up to Trump’s fiery State of the Union address showed 61% of those surveyed agreed that the Commander-in-Chief has “become erratic with age,” a sentiment 30% of Republicans voters agreed with.
The survey also suggested a drop in the percentage of Americans who agree with the sentiment that Trump is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges”, dropping to 45% in the latest poll, having been at 54% in September 2023.
Meanwhile, a poll from CNN last month showed the percentage of respondents that believe he has the “stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president” had dropped by 53% in late 2023 to 46%.
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll last week suggested majorities believed Trump doesn’t possess either the physical health (51%) or mental sharpness (56%) to carry out his duties effectively.
The former is up 23% since May 2023, while the later has jumped 13%. As with CNN’s poll, it’s still well shy of where Biden was in the dying days of his presidency, when the Democrat was in the 60s for both.
However, Trump is little more than a year into his second term, and the percentage who doubt Trump’s mental sharpness (56%) is comparable to Biden’s numbers at the same point in his term (February 2022) when the same measure polled at 54%, CNN reported.
The White House rejects any suggestion that the President is slowing down. Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller told The New Yorker magazine that his boss can “work harder and he has a better memory and he has more stamina and has more energy than a normal mortal,” suggesting the headline of the feature should be “‘The Superhuman President.’”
Meanwhile, Dr James Jones, the White House physician’s assistant told the outlet: “Nobody can stay up with him. The rest of the staff is tired; we are too. And he’s not.”
And while Trump’s detractors may be convinced he no longer has what it takes, there is ample evidence that he retains a remarkable level of stamina for his age, beating the record for the longest State of the Union address ever, and regularly posting on social media in the early hours at the end of the working day.