Joe Biden was of age when he took office as the president of the United States on January 20, 2021. At the time, he became both the oldest person to be inaugurated as U.S. president and the oldest sitting president in U.S. history. While Biden, a Democrat, campaigned for re-election in 2024, he suspended his campaign in July 2024 after being pressured to withdraw due to concerns about his age and mental acuity.
Before and during Biden's presidency, American voters and Biden's predecessor and successor as president, Donald Trump of the Republican Party, expressed concerns about Biden's health and fitness for office. These concerns led Dean Phillips, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, to launch an unsuccessful Democratic primary challenge against Biden prior to the 2024 presidential election. In a February 2024 report by the U.S. Department of Justice, Robert Hur, a special counsel, opined that Biden's memory had "significant limitations"; the Biden administration dismissed the report as a "partisan hit job".
Concerns about Biden's age and health intensified following his faltering performance in the June 2024 presidential debate against Trump, leading many Democratic Party lawmakers to call for Biden to end his campaign. After initially stating that he would remain in the race, Biden ultimately withdrew on July 21, 2024; he immediately endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to replace him as the party's presidential nominee. In the weeks and months following Biden's June 2024 debate against Trump, media outlets reported on efforts that had been made to manage and conceal Biden's age- and health-related limitations during his presidency. Harris went on to lose to Trump in the general election.
At the time his term as president ended on January 20, 2025, Biden was 82 years and 2 months old. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in May 2025.
Background In February 1988, Biden (who was then a member of the U.S. Senate), after experiencing numerous episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, underwent surgery to correct a leaking intracranial berry aneurysm. While recuperating, he suffered a pulmonary embolism, a serious complication. After a second aneurysm was surgically repaired in May of that year, Biden's recuperation kept him away from the Senate for seven months.
In 2018, when Biden was considering running for president, he consulted with friends, aides, and longtime supporters as to whether he was too old to run for the presidency. By 2019, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, CNN, The Atlantic, the Associated Press, and Slate all published articles on Biden's age and fitness for office. That year, in advance of the 2020 presidential election, some Democratic Party candidates for president attempted to use the then-76-year-old Biden's age against him. Many of his supporters criticized this campaign rhetoric, calling it ageist. Before and during Biden's 2020 presidential campaign, Biden was followed by rumors that he had undergone plastic surgery to appear younger. Writer Olivia Nuzzi reported in 2019 that Biden's alleged cosmetic procedures were "a minor obsession" of the Trump administration.
2020 presidential election
In April 2019, Biden announced his entry into the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. Throughout the primaries, other Democratic candidates, primary voters, and journalists raised concerns surrounding Biden's age and mental acuity, viewing the issues as a potential detriment to his electability. At the time of his announcement, Biden was 76 years old. Some of the age-related concerns were easily dismissed as his main opponent for the nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, was 77 years old, making him older than Biden. Nevertheless, Biden faced age-based criticisms due to lackluster debate performances and frequent gaffes. In a June 2019 debate, Representative Eric Swalwell stated that Biden should "pass the torch" to younger candidates. In a September 2019 debate, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro accused Biden of forgetting something he had said a few minutes earlier. Senator Cory Booker came to Castro's defense for his criticism of Biden at the debate. In March 2020, campaigning with Booker, Kamala Harris and the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, Biden said, "I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country."
At a March 2, 2020, campaign event, Biden unsuccessfully attempted to quote from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, saying, "We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by—you know, you know, the thing". At other points during his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden mistakenly stated that he was running for the Senate.
During the general election campaign, Biden again faced age and acuity-related criticisms and was consistently attacked by his Republican opponent, Donald Trump, on those issues. Biden was also criticized for limiting his public appearances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Trump accusing him of "hiding in the basement". Furthermore, Trump and his campaign would often react to Biden's gaffes by making unproven claims that he was suffering from dementia and by calling him "Sleepy Joe" at rallies.
According to ABC News, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian government spread disinformation about Biden's mental health during the 2020 presidential campaign. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reportedly withheld publication of a bulletin warning law enforcement agencies about this campaign.
Presidency (2021–2025) Biden was of age when he was inaugurated as president of the United States on January 20, 2021. At that time, he became the oldest person to assume the presidency and the oldest sitting president in U.S. history. Biden also became the first president to turn 80 years old while in office.
During Biden's presidency, Trump and right-wing media outlets continued to make claims of dementia and cognitive decline regarding Biden. The Biden administration routinely aimed to make light of the president's age by poking fun and joking about it in a manner similar to the way in which President Ronald Reagan responded to age-related concerns. When used by the Biden administration, this approach was met with both praise and mockery. The Biden administration was criticized for allegedly gaslighting or harassing journalists who asked questions about Biden's health or age.
Various events occurring during Biden's presidency highlighted concerns regarding his age and health.
2021–2022 In November 2021, Politico reported on a recent poll showing that American voters had "increasing doubts about the health and mental fitness of President Joe Biden". The poll showed that 48% of voters disagreed with the assertion that Biden was mentally fit. The report noted that voters' perceptions of Biden's physical and mental health had shifted dramatically since late 2020.
At the 2022 White House Easter Egg Roll, Biden was interrupted and directed away from reporters by a White House staffer dressed as the Easter Bunny. Video of the Easter Bunny incident went viral; it was viewed more than five million times. "Why is the Easter Bunny directing the President of the United States?", Republican senator Josh Hawley's press secretary Abigail Marone asked on Twitter.
The possibility of a 2024 Biden re-election bid led David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, to make the following comments to The New York Times in June 2022: "The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue."
Biden fell off his bicycle near his beach house in Delaware on June 18, 2022.
In the summer of 2022, a New York Times–Siena College poll found that 61% of Democratic voters wanted someone other than Biden to be the 2024 presidential nominee, citing his age as the main concern. Biden's aides dismissed age-related concerns as politically motivated attacks by Republicans.
As early as 2022, Democratic political consultant James Carville, Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic, Michelle Goldberg, Maureen Dowd and Ezra Klein of The New York Times, and The Economist opined that Biden should not run for re-election.
At a July 2022 event, Biden read instructions from his teleprompter aloud. He said, "It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast a ballot is consistently higher than the percentage of the men who do so—end of quote, repeat the line. Women are not without electoral and, or, political—let me be precise: not and, or—or political power". The blunder led social media users to question Biden's mental fitness.
Biden tested positive for COVID-19 in July 2022, experiencing mild symptoms.
On July 28, 2022, U.S. Representative Dean Phillips became the first incumbent Democratic member of the U.S. Congress to say that Biden should not run for re-election. Phillips called for "generational change," citing Biden's age.
While speaking at a September 28, 2022 event, Biden asked whether Representative Jackie Walorski was in attendance. Walorski had died in a car accident the previous month. The incident raised questions about Biden's mental sharpness.
At an October 2022 rally, Biden mistakenly asserted that he had campaigned in 54 U.S. states (there are only 50) in support of the Affordable Care Act. The gaffe went viral and raised questions about Biden's mental acuity.
On October 10, 2022, U.S. Representative Tim Ryan stated at a televised Ohio Senate debate with JD Vance that he did not believe Biden should run for re-election in 2024 and would like to see a generational change.
2023 In 2023, Democratic National Committee officials reportedly staged "hush-hush talks" to plan for contingencies in the event of Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race.
In 2023, Biden began to use a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine to help deal with a sleep apnea condition that he has, and to improve the quality of his sleep.
In February 2023, a biopsy was done on a lesion on Biden's chest. The lesion was confirmed to be basal-cell carcinoma and was successfully removed.
On April 25, 2023, Biden announced that he would seek re-election to the presidency in 2024.
Biden tripped and fell onstage at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation on June 1, 2023.
Biden left listeners confused when he ended a June 2023 speech to gun control advocates in Connecticut by saying, "God save the Queen, man". Queen Elizabeth II had died the previous September. White House staff stated that Biden was responding to a person in the crowd.
At a September 2023 press conference in Vietnam, Biden said, "I don't know about you, but I'm going to go to bed". Moments later, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre interrupted a rambling Biden and declared that the press conference was over. The incident raised questions about Biden's fitness.
A September 2023 CNN poll showed that "more than half (56 percent) of Democrats—and nearly three-quarters of Americans (73 percent) said they were seriously concerned for Biden's physical and mental competence".
On July 7, 2023, political scientist Eliot A. Cohen praised Biden but said he should not seek re-election. On September 12, 2023, David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post, opined that Biden should not run for re-election. On September 13, 2023, during the Morning Joe show where Ignatius made a guest appearance, MSNBC pundit Joe Scarborough said that every Democrat he had spoken to privately believed President Biden was too old to run for re-election.
Biden told the same story twice at a September 2023 fundraiser, raising questions about his mental capacity.