On Monday, speaker Mike Johnson found himself in Franklin, Tennessee, holding up a speaker phone broadcasting a live message from president Donald Trump to gathered Republican supporters.
The occasion was designed to generate voter enthusiasm for Tuesday’s special election for the vacant congressional seat left by Republican Mark Green, who resigned for a private sector role in June. Several polls have Aftyn Behn, a 36-year-old Democratic candidate with a promising record in community advocacy and nomically the outsider, running Republican candidate Matt Van Epps dangerously close.
“We’ve got a majority of three,” president Trump reminded the heartland.
“We have to win this seat. We’ve got you the largest tax cuts in history. I just want to thank everybody – I love Tennessee, one of my all-time favourite places. Tennessee must love me because we won by the biggest margins anybody has ever won by so that’s cool. She hates Christianity, number two she hates country music. How the hell can you elect a person like that? Matt Van Epps is gonna be a fantastic congressman, he is going to represent you so well.”
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Johnson wore the consolatory grin of a schoolteacher who had brought to a roomful of antsy kids merely a message from Santa Claus instead of a full-blown visit from the big guy, sleigh bells and all. Trump’s disembodied voice carried heft. But nothing compared to a visit from the real thing.
The moment fed into a message delivered from the lectern of the White House press briefing room on Monday. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt made it clear that the administration took issue with a weekend report in the New York Times depicting Trump’s all-too-human concessions to the ravages of time. The piece used research to offer a profile that suggested a significantly reduced domestic travel itinerary in the first year of his second term, compared with his first year as president, in 2017. It also reported that he had taken on a more demanding international schedule through 2025.
Leavitt argued that the data used “took about one third of the president’s daily calendar and daily schedule and said he’s doing less than he did in his first term or that he might not be fit for the job”.
“That is unequivocally false,” she added before reading aloud a headline published in the New York Times from last year: “Biden is doing 100 per cent fine after tripping while boarding Airforce One.”
She added: “Same outlet, same reporter, who wrote that president Trump is not fit for the job. Are you kidding me? You all see him every single day. He is the most accessible president in history. He is taking meetings around the clock.”
It should be emphasised that the New York Times piece nowhere states that Trump “is not fit for the job”. Much as the Republicans are now dogged by the inflation stick that helped to sink the Biden/Harris re-election ticket, Donald Trump is finding himself increasingly judged by the same scrutiny of ageism that ultimately proved catastrophic for Biden.
Katie Rogers, the New York Times reporter who wrote the piece, has covered Trump’s first term and the Biden administration, and responded to Leavitt’s critique on Monday night on CNN. “My immediate response is that I think this White House know how headlines work and those headlines were taking quotes from press secretaries and also the White House physician at the time. Those aren’t editorialising the president’s [Biden’s] health. Another point of fact is that president Trump and his physicians have not always been upfront about the health issues he has faced – case in point, he was much sicker with the coronavirus than the public knew at the time in 2020.
“The difference right now is that his aides are under immense pressure to present a vigorous, this-president-has-done-more-than-any-president-ever image to the public and they are under pressure from him to do that. There is political pressure on him. The economy is showing signs of incredible stress and that all comes to [a] head in a president who is very upset behind the scenes and is again wondering much as he did in the first term why people aren’t defending him.”
There is a legitimacy to Karoline Leavitt’s general contention in that few world leaders, anywhere, put themselves in front of live, unregulated broadcast media platforms as regularly or for as long as Trump. The indefatigability of the 79-year-old has become an essential part of the second-term mythos: that he never stops, that he has boundless energy. Regular White House correspondents from both liberal and conservative outlets have at times bemoaned the fact that Trump never seems to sleep on the overnight Air Force One journeys he has undertaken this year.
Trump himself habitually compares his stamina and fondness for long, unscripted speeches against Joe Biden’s rare and curated public appearances and offers an often vicious running commentary on his predecessor’s mental acuity. Many US media outlets have this year acknowledged that their scrutiny of Biden was not as robust as it might have been – ironically one of the reasons why Trump may find himself under a more exacting spotlight in his second term.
The White House administration would argue that the spotlight on Trump’s energy belongs to the generally hostile and critical coverage of his presidency by many media outlets. On Monday, it released the summary of Trump’s recent MRI scan written by his physician, Sean Barbarella. The paragraph reported that overall, Trump’s “cardiovascular system shows excellent health” and that “everything evaluated is functioning within normal limits with no acute or chronic concerns”.
It’s an assessment that would reassure the loved ones of many a 79-year-old retiree. But Trump is less than one year into the gruelling presidential schedule and his health is of general concern to the people, 74 million of whom voted against him last November. The constant comparisons with Joe Biden will soon lose relevance now that the 46th president has retreated from public life. Next year’s calendar is likely to include a vigorous circuit of the rallies that proved such a vital part of Trump’s comeback from political isolation.
Meanwhile, the administration will keep an anxious eye on the Tennessee 7th district results on Tuesday night. The area runs from the northern Alabama border through steadfastly Red rural terrain but incorporates the Democratic strongholds of Nashville and Clarksville, the city that may tip the result definitively. Some polls have Aftyn Behn running the Republican candidate within two percentage points in a seat the Republicans carried by 22 points last time around.
“I think it means they are desperate,” Behn said of the planned Republican telethon last week.
“I don’t care who you voted for, I don’t care what political party you belong to but if you’re upset about the cost of living and the chaos of Washington, then I’m your candidate. I think it means they’re desperate and fraught with the onslaught of attack ads against me. The only reason they are pulling out all the stops is that they don’t have a plan to tackle the healthcare issue and the affordability crisis. I see their telethon town hall and I raise the 10,000 doors we are going to knock this weekend.”
Donald Trump, meanwhile, spent Monday afternoon at a closed event speaking to guests at the ‘first White House Christmas party’. Video snippets released show him behind a lectern whose pulpit was supported by a gold spread-winged eagle. Trump, in the opulent surrounds, seemed energised by the occasion.
“It’s a great honour to be your president,” he told them.
“We’re gonna do a fantastic job. You know, we have a little more than three years left. And three years for Trump is an eternity.”
