Donald Trump Is ‘Tired’ After Just 2 Years, Aides Say, But In 2016 Trump Said Clinton Lacked ‘Stamina’ For Job

After two years in office, Donald Trump — who in the 2016 presidential campaign ridiculed his Republican primary opponent Jeb Bush as “low energy,” as Politico recounted — now may be too “tired” to effectively campaign for his own reelection, his aides fear.

The report on the 72-year-old Trump’s apparent fatigue appeared in a New York Times article published on Friday. In the NYT report, Trump aides said that the once “unstoppable campaigner” will now “commit to participating in only one campaign event a day, and recently balked at a possible rally out West during a fund-raising swing.”

Trump will turn 73 on June 14 of this year, meaning that by the time of the 2020 Republican Convention, followed by what promises to be a bruising general election campaign leading up to the November vote, Trump will be 74 — older than all but one previous U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, was on his final day in office, according to the Presidents of the USA site.

While running for president in the Republican primaries in 2015 and 2016, Trump repeatedly attacked Bush, the early frontrunner for the GOP nomination, as “a low-energy person,” and “a very low-energy kind of guy,” as Vox reported at the time.

The attacks appeared to be effective. Bush — once considered the favorite to win the GOP nomination — dropped out of the race early in the primary season, on February 20, 2016, Politico recounted.

After becoming the Republican nominee himself, Trump launched a similar attack on his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, criticizing what he called Clinton’s lack of “stamina,” according to The Washington Post.

“She doesn’t have the look. She doesn’t have the stamina. I said she doesn’t have the stamina. And I don’t believe she does have the stamina,” Trump said during the first presidential debate with Clinton. “To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina.”

But even before Friday’s report that Trump has become “tired” after barely more than two years in office, he faced criticism for his own seeming lack of stamina. According to an Axios report in January of 2018, before Trump had completed even one year of his term, his daily work schedule already consisted of only seven hours, which usually did not begin until his arrival in the Oval Office at 11 a.m.

Prior to that, Trump’s schedule revealed numerous hours of what was labeled “Executive Time,” during which Trump apparently did little other than watch TV cable news, and post to his Twitter account. In addition, Trump has spent more time relaxing outside of Washington, D.C., than many presidents, so far spending 145 days at his private resorts in Palm Beach, Florida, and Bedminster, New Jersey, according Trump Golf Count. That averages to more than one trip to a resort or country club every five days.