My 62nd birthday was this past Friday.
I celebrated by running nine miles with a guy from my gym who is 32 years younger than me and has the most insane 90-minute workout regimen you’ve ever witnessed. I’m proud to be 62. But after June 12, it all goes downhill.
That’s because two days after my birthday, Donald Trump turns 80.
He doesn’t seem nearly as proud of getting older as I do.
Watch the man for five minutes and you’ll understand why. The bad paint job on his face. The mangled wire of cheaply dyed blonde hair sitting on top of his head. The foundation he cakes on before he goes on camera. He’s phoney like baloney.
Everything about Donald Trump’s public presentation is designed to make you forget that he is, by any measure, an old man. He’s an octogenarian. A person who, if he were anyone else, might be spending his weekends at a great-grandchild’s soccer game rather than posting unhinged memes at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
But Trump isn’t aging gracefully — at all — and the fakery of his facade is starting to bust out like his cankles.
When he was on his way back to Washington after attending the Knicks vs. Spurs NBA Finals on Monday night (I believe the Knicks lost because he was there), he stepped off Marine One, and lit up social media. Trump serpentined across the tarmac like a senile old man who forgot the difference between left, right and center.
He clutches railings going up and down the steps of Air Force One, wobbling gingerly and slowly. It is only a matter of time until, like Joe Biden before him, he gets quietly rerouted to the smaller, lower stairs tucked underneath the plane.
The ones reserved for men in their 80s, said with all due respect to President Biden.
For his 80th birthday, Trump is planning a blood-and-gore celebration UFC match on the White House lawn. What better way to mark eight decades of life than watching people getting punched in the mouth — which, even on a good day, should happen to Trump.
But while Trump parties, the rest of America will be celebrating his birthday differently, by paying for it due to his ineptitude and mistakes.
This week, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that annual headline inflation accelerated to 4.2%, the highest level in three years.
Inflation is surging. Grocery bills are climbing. Gas prices are up. Electric bills, car prices, flights, vacations, the basic architecture of a decent American life is getting more expensive by the day.
Trump is so happy that you are paying more for everything. On Wednesday, in what may be the most honest — and stupidest — thing he’s said in months, Trump told the country, “I love the inflation.” That’s your birthday message from the White House.
Happy Trump’s birthday, America. You'd better live it up, while you can still afford to.
Meanwhile, Americans are watching what was once described as a two-week “excursion” into Iran stretch into its fourth month, with no end in sight and no deal materializing despite Trump’s near-daily promises that one is just around the corner.
On Thursday, he went from “taking total control” of Iran’s oil industry with military action, to canceling military strikes. Why? You guessed it. Because a deal is near — BREAKING NEWS!
And here’s another thing you didn’t ask for, but you’re getting from Trump for his birthday. A new ballroom. At your expense — trust me, we’ll pay for this somehow. Trump is tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build us all a ballroom.
Oh, wait a minute. It’s his ballroom. A ballroom, he has assured us, “the finest ballroom anywhere in the world.” He will celebrate in it. His donors will celebrate in it. You will never set foot in it.
But perhaps you’ll feel better about the inflation and the war and the ballroom knowing that at the White House, there is another very beautiful room that you are not allowed to enter — a new gold-plated luxury bathroom in the Lincoln bedroom where you will never lodge.
In April, in a speech (or diatribe) at The Villages in Florida, surrounded by senior citizens, Trump mocked the very demographic he belongs to. He stood before a crowd of older Americans and sneered at them, “Look at you old guys.” The proverbial pot calling the kettle black.
At himself, though he’d never see it that way. The man has no capacity for self-awareness, and apparently no capacity for shame, and no capacity for realizing that those “old guys” in front of him were probably in better shape than he is.
Trump wears his age the way he wears everything, as a lie and a con job, masking the truth with unadulterated B.S. Trump’s age is a thing to be managed and obscured. He is declining in plain sight, and the country is watching a man who cannot admit weakness preside over a government that is increasingly cracking apart because of it.
And because the damage being done in his name, to real people, in real time, is nothing to celebrate. And because a man who sneers at the elderly, denies his own frailty, and tells Americans he loves inflation while they struggle to buy groceries has earned nothing in the way of goodwill or good wishes.
So, maybe you will go to the grocery store this Sunday, and be horrified at the number that appears on the cash register as you check out. If so, then think of that as Trump’s costly birthday present to you.