Former President Donald Trump speaks during a Republican campaign event on July 8 in Las Vegas.
John Locher/AP Photo
- Donald Trump called a New York Post columnist about his ex-wife, Ivana, who passed away last week.
- He told the reporter that 78 “is not old.”
- The comments come as Biden, 79, faces questions about whether he’s too old to run for a second term.
Former President Donald Trump hasn’t said whether he thinks there should be age limits on the presidency, but in a phone call with New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams he indicated that if there is a ceiling, he hasn’t reached it yet.
Adams writes that she was having a pedicure when the former president called unexpectedly to talk about his first ex-wife, Ivana Trump, who passed away last week after a fall at the age of 73. The funeral is Wednesday.
“Look, let’s us just manage to get through this awful painful experience,” Donald Trump, 76, said. “And after this… just remember… just remember what I’m telling you… 78 is not old.”
The comments come as President Joe Biden, 79, is facing media coverage, skeptical polling, and whispers within the Democratic party about whether he’s too old to run for president in 2024.
Trump himself has been dangling the prospect that he’ll run again for more than a year, and if he were to be elected again then he would be 78 — the same age Biden was when he became president in 2021. Biden would be just days away from turning 82 if reelected, and would be 86 at the end of a second term.
Adams reported that Trump’s comments came after she had asked him “if he thought we were about to also lose our country,” and without naming Biden he replied that the president was “setting us all back.”
“It’s horrible,” Trump said. “We’ve never been at such a low point. That trip to Saudi Arabia? We have more oil than they have. This man in Washington is setting us all back. Setting everybody back.”
For most of the phone call the former president was full of praise for his late ex-wife, Ivana Trump, a former model and Olympic skier who was the mother of his three eldest children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump.
Donald Trump told Adams his ex-wife was “outstanding,” a “hard worker,” and “beautiful,” and added that he knew Adams and Ivana Trump “liked each other from the earliest days.”
“I’m here. I’m in New York. I’m feeling OK. I had some rest. A little sleep. But I’m sad,” Trump told Adams.
The couple had married in 1977 and their 1992 divorce received tabloid-heavy coverage. Trump went on to marry Marla Maples before divorcing her and marrying his current, third wife Melania Trump.
Ivana Trump and Donald Trump later had a cordial relationship, and during a 2017 interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” she referred to herself as the real “first lady.”
