Trump, 79, Freaked Out Allies With Prediction About When He’ll Die
The “specter of death” has come up in private discussions about 2028.
Xinhua News Agency/Peng Ziyang/Xinhua via Getty Images
Donald Trump stunned members of his inner circle by calmly predicting when his own body would be lying in state, according to a new report.
The 79-year-old president reportedly made the comment at Mar-a-Lago as television screens showed Jimmy Carter’s casket at the U.S. Capitol, telling the room: “You know, within ten years that will be me.”
The remark, attributed to a person familiar with his comments, appears in a sprawling New York Magazine profile, “The Superhuman President,” about the president’s health and psyche.
Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt— pictured listening to Trump speak to reporters on board Air Force One while returning from the World Economic Forum—told the magazine she did not recall Trump making the comment.
Chip Somodevilla/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The episode adds a morbid twist to how Trump and his team now talk about 2028.
One senior White House official told New York Magazine that “the specter of death sometimes manifests in the 2028 conversation,” describing aides gaming out whether the president will be willing—or able—to mount yet another run when he will be in his early 80s.
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At the same time, Trump has leaned into the idea that clinging to the presidency is what keeps him alive.
Trump told New York Magazine that his father, Fred Trump, had an expression he will never forget: “To retire is to expire.” It is a line he has used for years in interviews and on friendly platforms, making clear he sees work—and now the Oval Office—as a bulwark against aging.
Bernard Gotfryd/Library of Congress
Trump is already the oldest person ever to be elected president.
Instead of talking about slowing down, he has repeatedly teased the prospect of running again, boasting that he could seek a third term and even what would amount to a fourth term, when he is 86, even as legal experts point out the constitutional two-term limit.
Trump’s brags clash with mounting unease about his health, which the Daily Beast has led the way in reporting.
In the New York Magazine piece, aides fret about his bruised hands, frequent naps in public, and a mysterious MRI trip to Walter Reed that the White House struggled to explain.
Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb warned this month that Trump’s cognitive decline is “palpable,” while prominent physician Dr. Bruce Davison told the Beast’s podcast that the president’s daily 325 mg aspirin regimen is the kind of dose usually reserved for stroke patients.
A large bruise can be clearly seen on the back of Trump's left hand during a signing ceremony for his “Board of Peace” at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 22 in Davos, Switzerland.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Inside Trump’s circle, the result is a strange dual reality, of a president who talks about death, legacy, and what he will leave behind—from a $400 million East Wing ballroom to the “Arc de Trump” he wants erected across from the Lincoln Memorial—while still casting himself as a superhuman figure who can outwork younger rivals and defy time.
As one senior official told New York Magazine, succession talk is as much about letting Trump live forever through his chosen heirs as it is about acknowledging that he will not.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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