President Donald Trump reportedly refused to let his own staff strategize around his age as he barrels toward his 80th birthday, according to his longtime biographer Michael Wolff.
Speaking on the "Inside Trump's Head" podcast, Wolff said the question of how to handle the milestone has become a touchy subject inside Trump's orbit. He described it as a "difficult and awkward discussion inside the Trump circle," one that aides recognized they needed to get ahead of after watching former President Joe Biden's cognitive decline come to define his term.
But when one person raised it, Wolff said, Trump shut the conversation down cold. He "cut this person dead," the biographer told co-host Joanna Coles, with no appetite for any plan to counterprogram around the birthday.
Instead, Wolff said, Trump now waves off questions about turning 80 by pointing to a different anniversary entirely: the 250th birthday of the United States. That, in the president's telling, is the birthday that actually matters.
Trump himself has not hidden his irritation. Inviting Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Mehmet Oz to his birthday celebration this week, the president told him not to bother with well-wishes. "I'm not happy about that birthday," he said, calling 80 a number he never liked but was stuck with.
The unease is hard to separate from Trump's years of mockery aimed at Biden, who is only three years older. He branded his predecessor "Sleepy Joe," needled him over verbal stumbles, and as recently as last week dismissed Biden as never having been especially sharp. In a recent interview, Trump insisted he felt decades younger than his age and said Biden was the worst thing to happen to old people.
Now those same questions are circling Trump, who has faced scrutiny over bruised hands, swollen ankles and clips of him appearing to nod off at public events.
White House communications director Steven Cheung dismissed Wolff with a profanity-laced statement, calling the author a fraud and accusing him of inventing stories.