Trump Is Too Old for the Presidency - America Needs an Age Limit Now

Ultimize. Jonathan Lemire has a new piece in The Atlantic asking why Donald Trump, who's about to turn 80, isn't facing the same level of scrutiny Joe Biden faced at that age. And that is the right question, but I want to go bigger today. I don't want to ask just, is Donald Trump too old? I want to ask, what's the actual mathematical age limit for being president of the United States, or what should it be? Because we already believe in age limits as a society. We pretend this is some radical idea, but it really isn't. You can't be president at age 34. You could be a genius, you could be a Rhodes Scholar, you could have started a company, cured athlete's foot, brokered peace in the Middle East, and personally taught ChatGPT how to stop using dashes. Still, no, the Constitution says you must be 35. You can't be a senator until you're 30. You can't serve in the House until 25. In most states, you can't drive at 12, even if little Braden has watched every Formula 1 documentary and can explain tire degradation better than the guy at Jiffy Lube. Why is this? Because society understands something very simple: individual exceptions do not defeat the need for general risk rules. There are probably some 33-year-olds who would be better presidents than some 63-year-olds. Too bad we still say 35, you got to be 35. There are probably some 15-year-olds who would drive better than some 50-year-olds texting while eating a burrito and screaming at talk radio. Too bad we still don't hand 15-year-olds the keys to a dump truck and say, good luck, young philosopher, try not to destroy a Starbucks. So here's my proposal. No one should be eligible to run for president if they would turn 72, the age of 72, at any point during the term they are seeking. In practical terms, that means you should not be older than 67 on Inauguration Day. Call it the 68 rule. If you're 68, you're done. Not done as a person, not done as a leader, not done as a thinker, not done as a citizen, just done applying for the most dangerous job on Earth. The presidency is not a retirement tribute. It's not a lifetime achievement award. It's not the Kennedy Center Honors with access to drone strikes. It's the nuclear codes. It is the global economy. It's war and peace. It's— pandemics, terrorism, banking crises, artificial intelligence, energy shocks, hostage negotiations, China, Russia, Iran, NATO, Social Security, Medicare, and the terrifying possibility that one unstable man at 2:00 AM in the morning can move markets, terrify allies, or start a war because somebody on television hurt his feelings. So, why 68? Because the president serves a 4-year term. If we decide that 72 is the upper danger line, then the real eligibility limit has to be before that. You shouldn't be allowed to start a term that carries you directly into the age range where the risk curve gets much worse. The brain changes with age. It's not an insult, it is biology. Processing speed slows. Task switching becomes harder. Executive function weakens. The frontal regions of the brain, the areas most tied to judgment, impulse control, planning, and decision-making, are especially vulnerable to aging. That doesn't mean every older person is incompetent. Of course not. Some 74-year-olds are brilliant. Some 82-year-olds are sharper than I was at 22. But again, we don't design constitutional rules around the most impressive exception. We design them to reduce catastrophic risk. That's why we have a minimum age, and that is why we need a maximum age. If 35 is the constitutional floor because we don't trust underdeveloped judgment, then 68 should be the practical ceiling because we should not inaugurate someone into a job where they might deteriorate rapidly and then be almost impossible to remove. That's the part nobody wants to talk about. People can fade fast in their 70s. Not always, not everyone, but it happens, and it happens a lot faster and more frequently than people fading in their 40s or 50s. Someone can look mostly fine at 69, a little slower at 71. Obviously diminished at 73 and completely surrounded by people pretending everything is fine by age 74. And once that person is president, good luck. The 25th Amendment sounds nice in a civics textbook. In real life, it's almost useless for ordinary cognitive decline. The cabinet is not going to walk into the Oval Office and say, sir, We've all agreed that you're now mostly rage, bronzer, and unfinished sentences. That's not how administrations work. Administrations create a protective bubble. Every president gets surrounded by sycophants, flatterers, careerists, relatives, donors, staffers, and terrified aides whose whole job is to say, "You were incredible today, sir," even if the president just tried to appoint the White House chandelier as ambassador to Finland. Biden had that. His team insisted everything was fine until the debate made the obvious impossible to deny. And Trump absolutely has that. Trump has built an entire political movement where the first commandment is thou shalt never admit the leader is wrong, tired, confused, cruel, ridiculous, or asleep. Jonathan Lemire's Atlantic piece lays out what any fair-minded person can see. Trump is traveling less. He is speaking seated more often. He appears to nod off in public. His hands have shown deep bruising, sometimes covered with makeup. His tangents are getting longer and stranger. His insults are getting nastier and more uncontrolled. He recently posted 55 messages on Truth Social in just a few hours. Late night hours in one night, many filled with conspiracy theories and complete nonsense. Now, if your grandfather did that, the family wouldn't say, "Grandpa is demonstrating disruptive communications innovations." No, they'd say, "Take his phone away." Then someone would tell him, "Ah, the internet's broken." Then a nurse would bring him pudding. But you can't take the phone away from the President of the United States. You can't tell the Secret Service, "Hide Truth Social in the attic." You can't tell the nuclear football guy. If he starts posting about Jesus and arresting Obama again, just jog in the opposite direction. And no, I'm not claiming to diagnose Trump officially with Alzheimer's or dementia. That's for doctors. But you don't need a medical degree to see degradation. You don't need a neurologist to notice when someone's judgment is falling apart in public. And Trump's not merely old. He's old in the exact way that makes presidential power terrifying. He's more impulsive, more erratic, more cruel, more detached from ordinary people, more willing to say things no sane politician under 70 would ever say out loud. When Trump basically says he doesn't care whether his wars or tariffs or global chaos rise prices for average Americans, That isn't just bad policy. That's the window into a mind that no longer feels normal political restraint. A normal politician still has enough self-preservation to pretend to care about people. Trump is losing even that. He's increasingly sounding like the caricature of the old man in the nursing home who said, "I don't give a damn. I'll do whatever I want." Except the old man is not yelling at the pudding cart. He has command authority over the most powerful military in human history. That's the issue. This is not about hating old people. Look, I'm 63. I run every day. I lift weights every day. I feel strong. I still work hard. I still think I have a functioning brain, though I understand there may be viewers who consider that an open question. But I can already tell the difference 'When I was in my 40s, I could go from meeting to meeting to meeting, switch topics instantly, work late, travel in different time zones, and then still have energy to argue with some idiot on television. Now, after 5:00 PM, my prefrontal cortex puts up a tiny sign that says, closed for renovations. If I have 3 intense meetings in a row, my brain starts buffering like hotel Wi-Fi.' Now, this isn't shameful. This is life. But if I can feel a change at 63, why are we pretending nothing changes at 78, 80, or 82? If someone wants to make the case that I should never be president, okay, that's fine. I know many Americans who would enthusiastically sign that petition. But the broader point remains. The presidency is not where we should gamble. We shouldn't say, well, this particular 74-year-old seems energetic. Okay, maybe he is. This particular brilliant immigrant might be an extraordinary leader, but we still say no because the Constitution requires natural-born citizenship. This particular 20-year-old might be a legislative genius. We still say no to the Senate for that person. Rules are blunt instruments. That's what makes them rules. So let's stop pretending an upper age limit is somehow undemocratic. It's no more undemocratic than a lower age limit. The people would still choose the president. They would just choose from candidates who meet the eligibility requirements. And if that means some beloved 73-year-old statesman can't run, it's not a national tragedy. It's not. He could advise, she could advise, he can write, he can speak, she can teach, he can mentor, they can go on television and be wise, they can do everything except hold the one job where rapid mental decline can endanger the entire world. We need older people in public life. Yeah, we really do. We need their wisdom, we need their memory, we need their sense of history. We need them to tell young people, no, you did not invent music, sex, or political corruption. We had all three before TikTok. But we don't need octogenarian presidents. We don't need presidents who are one bad night of sleep away from a constitutional crisis. We don't need presidents whose aides spend half their time explaining that he was not asleep, he was blinking. He was not confused. He was joking. Yeah, that's it. He was not threatening civilization. He was negotiating. He was not posting like a man who lost his phone privileges. He was communicating directly with the people. No, the presidency should not be a cognitive stress test conducted on live television with nuclear weapons in the background. So here's the rule: you must be 35, to become president, you must be young enough that you will not turn 72 during the term. That means practically no one older than 67 on inauguration day. That's my equation. Maturity, yeah. Experience, yes. Wisdom, yes. But also stamina, impulse control, cognitive flexibility, emotional regulation, and the ability to get through a national security briefing without turning it into a 3-hour story about a snake in Peru, Barack Obama's daughters, and how your health is better than everybody else's. America has more than 330 million people. If we can't find one qualified president between the ages of 35 and 67, then our problem is not age discrimination. Our problem is that the empire is already over. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. Thanks for joining me today. Ultimize.