During a campaign stop earlier this week, controversial US presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed he could live to the age of 200. The only problem is, Trump would have to give up Junk Food. Which has long been considered his dietary Achilles’s Heel…
Trump’s 2019 Fast Food Feast for the varsity national champion Clemson Tigers…
“I feel like I’m about 35 years old. I feel better now than I did 30 years ago,” the 77-year-old Trump told reporters during a news conference in New Hampshire. When asked how he proposed to live to 200, he replied: “It’s called genetics. Some people have great genes.”
Trump was resurrecting a comment from his Former White House Physician, Ronnie Jackson, who once said Trump, “might live to be 200 years old,” if he didn’t eat so much junk food. Alas for Ronnie, his comments to the White House press corps elicited mostly laughter.
A history of dietary controversy
Trump has definitely had a questionable and controversial relationship with Junk Food. If you remember nothing else about this issue, you’ll probably recall how he served a Fast Food victory supper to the the College Football National Champion Clemson University Tigers in January, 2019. The Whitehouse staffers who would ordinarily have handled the arrangements were on furlough – due to a government shutdown. So the President made an executive decision. And sent his minions out to score a vast array of Fast Food menu items.
“If it’s American, I like it. It’s all American stuff,” Trump told reporters. “300 Hamburgers, many, many French Fries – all of our favorite foods. […] We have some very large people that like eating. So I think we’re going to have a little fun.”
Which pretty much sums up his attitude on healthy eating.
Finger lickin’ Trump
In an infamous 2016 campaign trail incident, Trump was photographed chowing down on a whole bucket of KFC. And grinning, as if there was nothing to worry about.
Trump chowing down on a whole bucket of KFC in 2016…
A new man?
Just last November, Trump posted a doctor’s note on his Truth Social website claiming he he was in ‘excellent health’ owing to recent ‘weight reduction’.
Trump himself recently boasted he was also in great cognitive health, feeling 20 years younger than his calendar age.
“I’ll let you know when I go bad; I really think I’ll be able to tell you. Because someday we go bad,” he said. “I feel my mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago.”
Alas, in a speech during the same New Hampshire campaign stop, Trump repeatedly confused Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Polozi.
Haley made hay of that mega-bloop, of course, and took a swipe at presumed Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden at the same time: “We need people at the top of their game. […] I’m not saying that this is a Joe Biden situation, but I’m saying, are we really going to go and have two eighty-year-olds running for president?”
But we’re not here to debate the mental fitness of any candidate.
My take
Once again, we rely on Wikipedia for the scientific Big Picture… The entry on ‘Maximum Life Span’ asserts as follows:
- Evidence to date suggests there is a limit to human lifespan.
- That limit appears to be about age 125.
- The oldest person on record was Jeanne Calment (1875–1997), a Frenchwoman who is verified to have lived to 122.
- For whatever reason(s), the human maximal lifespan has been declining since the 1990s.
Obviously, none of this bodes well for Trump.
~ Maggie J.