Former President Donald Trump was reminded of his advanced age on Tuesday after arguing that “only stupid people” appoint older judges to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump, 78, made the remarks while touting his three Supreme Court picks—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett—during an interview with Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago.
“It’s amazing, because I got three in four years,” Trump said. “Most people get none. Because, you know, you put them in, they’re young. You tend to put them in young.”
“Only stupid people put old,” he continued. “You know, you don’t put old in, because they’re there for two years or three years, right?”
Scott Olson
Micklethwait then interjected by telling the former president, “You’re a 78-year-old man running for president.”
“So, I got three,” Trump responded, ignoring Micklethwait’s remark. “A lot of presidents get none, I got three. And, uh, I think they’ve been three great choices too, by the way.”
Trump then warned that the “radical left” would put “up to 25” left-wing justices on the Supreme Court if Vice President Kamala Harris defeats him in the presidential election, despite the court having a total of only nine justices.
Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, told Newsweek the following via email when asked for comment on Micklethwait’s age remark: “Micklethwait was getting eviscerated throughout the interview for his blatant lies and he tried to say something stupid but was roundly booed by the crowd. That’s what happens when you are fake news.”
As Supreme Court justices serve for life or until they decide to retire, all presidents tend to choose relatively young but experienced judges to fill the role. Trump’s appointees were between 40 and 53 when they joined the court. President Joe Biden’s appointee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was 51.
The ex-president’s allies frequently criticized Biden’s age and cognitive state before he dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris on July 21. However, Trump is the oldest person to ever be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party and has increasingly faced questions about his own physical and mental fitness for office.
A Marquette Law School poll released earlier this month found that 61 percent of registered voters agreed that Trump is “too old to be president,” while only 13 percent said the same of Harris.
In an article published by The Atlantic in September, psychiatrist Richard Friedman claimed that Trump is showing signs of cognitive decline, pointing to the former president’s behavior during his September 10 presidential debate with Harris.
While Friedman did not diagnose Trump with any medical condition, he argued that Trump’s vocabulary, his verbal and logical coherence, his ability to adapt to new topics and his facial expressions were all “alarming” and may indicate that he does not have “a healthy brain.”
Trump’s behavior at a town hall event in Pennsylvania on Monday, when the former president stopped taking questions from the audience and instead danced on stage and stood awkwardly as music played for 39 minutes, prompted his Democratic opponent to weigh in on social media.
“Hope he’s okay,” Harris wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in response to video clips of the Trump town hall.
