News flash: President Donald Trump, 79, is old.

We know it. He knows it.

Trump is the oldest president ever to be elected, and he will turn the big 8-0 in June.

Given that Trump has one of the most important – and demanding – jobs in the world, it’s perfectly normal that the news media and citizens alike would have concerns about his age and health.

And it’s really not surprising that The New York Times recently ran a piece entitled, “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office.”

Plenty of others in the media have raised questions about his health, too, since he started his second term in January. Any new bruise, swelling or sleepy moment is big news among the mainstream press.

So what’s the problem? The hypocrisy.

This intense scrutiny and concern with age were absent for the vast majority of former President Joe Biden’s term in office. Biden, who is now 83, was the oldest president to sit in the Oval Office.

Biden was clearly suffering from mental and physical decline. The news media ignored it.

Since I was one of the few journalists in the “mainstream” press to call out Biden’s shortfalls (before it became impossible to ignore after his stunningly bad June 2024 debate performance), I’ve already spent significant time detailing the former president’s obvious physical and mental decline while he was in office. I don’t want to replay it in detail.

Yet, most in the legacy media ignored what was happening and seemed content to take the spin from the White House that Biden was perfectly fine and better than ever.

When conservative media or other journalists who were actually paying attention called out Biden’s issues, that reporting was dubbed “cheap fakes” by former Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

The cover-up by Biden’s inner circle – and the media – was detailed in a book by journalists Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, released in May (once Trump was president).

What happened with Biden was a huge mea culpa moment for the media. Did they learn anything? I doubt it.

Trump may be old, but there's no doubt he's working hard

Trump, not surprisingly, was miffed with The Times’ portrayal, calling it a “hit piece.”

“There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST ('That was aced') JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now!”

And to his credit, he is still keeping a full schedule and is much more accessible to the media and public than his predecessor was. While Biden’s team tried to keep him out of the public eye (for good reason), Trump is in it constantly.

The White House provided Oval Office logs to the New York Post to counter the narrative that Trump is somehow slowing down. The logs span about 10 weekdays in November and show the president worked about 50-hour weeks, not including weekend events he may have attended or participated in.

And he’s certainly not hiding from the press.

Just in his first 100 days of his second presidential term, Trump had more exchanges – 129 – with reporters than any of his six predecessors, a study found.

While many of his sit-down interviews in 2025 have been with more friendly media, like Fox News, Trump’s also done extended appearances on ABC News and CBS News' “60 Minutes.”

I give the president credit for that.

A bigger question is why Americans keep electing politicians of such advanced ages. The number of lawmakers in Congress who are over 80 is growing, and our most recent presidents are the oldest ever.

We, including the news media, should demand accountability from all our public officials, and Trump’s White House should be upfront with his health, which Biden’s team was not.

And we should think about age more before putting these people in office.

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The media cares about president's age, now that it's Trump | Opinion

Reporting by Ingrid Jacques, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect