Their birthday plans reflect their personalities — and the shifting politics of the moment, as brash self-promotion has become a political asset.
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Four years ago, President Joe Biden entered his ninth decade largely out of public view, marking his 80th birthday at the White House with a family brunch tucked between his granddaughter’s wedding and the Thanksgiving holiday.
President Donald Trump’s celebration of the same milestone this Sunday will be anything but understated. He plans to mark his 80th birthday with a UFC championship fight, a nationally televised spectacle and an octagonal cage towering over the South Lawn.
The contrast is less a tale of two birthdays than of two presidencies.
Biden and Trump, the two oldest men ever to occupy the White House, have spent the past decade trading presidential longevity records. Their starkly different approaches to the octogenarian milestone reflect broader differences in their political styles, and the political realities surrounding them.
Biden, who became the oldest president in history when he took the oath of office, spent much of his presidency trying to neutralize concerns about his age, presenting himself as an experienced public servant whose judgment, relationships and family values made him a steady steward — even amid whispers that he’d lost a step.
Trump, who would surpass Biden’s mark in August 2028, has embraced a different image: a larger-than-life figure and singular force in American life who, even as he enters his ninth decade, shows little interest in downplaying his age or stature.
“For Biden it was like, ‘How do I do this in a way that celebrates who I am and who I want to be with on this really important birthday, in a way that manages the political aspects of it?’” said Peter Loge, a political communications professor at George Washington University. “As opposed to Trump, who says, ‘How can I be the Trumpiest Trump in the Trumpiest way possible?’”
Biden and Trump are the only two American presidents to turn 80 in office, reflecting an aging national leadership that has frustrated many younger Americans. But where Biden often treated his age as a sign of weakness, Trump broadcasts it as a sign of strength.
In five decades in the public eye, Biden has favored private birthdays, including the ones he celebrated as president. In November 2022, there was no major public celebration of his 80th, no nationally televised event and no effort to turn the occasion into a political moment. Instead, Biden’s aides spent much of the weekend fielding questions about whether the oldest president in American history should seek a second term.
“I can’t even say the age I’m going to be,” he told reporters days before the event. “I can’t even get it out of my mouth.”
Trump plans to celebrate turning the same age on Sunday with “UFC Freedom 250,” a mixed martial arts event on the White House grounds. The event, which coincides with Flag Day and the nation’s semiquincentennial celebrations, is expected to draw thousands of spectators and a national television audience to championship bouts inside a temporary arena on the South Lawn.
That has prompted criticism that Trump is making America’s milestone largely about himself. The reaction echoes denunciations of his birthday observance last year, when he reviewed a military parade to mark the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army.
On that day, tanks rolled through downtown Washington and military aircraft thundered overhead for a parade that detractors said was more a celebration of Trump than a tribute to the Army, which he denied. After Trump’s speech on that day, members of the crowd serenaded him with “Happy Birthday.”
“It’s a reflection of how both men view their role in the world,” Loge said. “President Joe Biden — a creature of Washington and in a large way defined by his family — in a way grew up in Washington, D.C., and he’s always held his family close. Donald Trump has built a career performing a show of Donald Trump.”
A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment.
The White House spokesperson defended the White House UFC fight as appropriate.
“The UFC Freedom 250 Fight on the South Lawn of the White House will be one of the most entertaining nights in American history,” White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster said in a statement. “Having this spectacle take place at the People’s House on Flag Day during our nation’s semiquincentennial anniversary is a fitting tribute.”
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Trump repeatedly sought to make Biden’s age a political liability and a personal embarrassment. During two presidential campaigns and after returning to the White House, Trump claimed that Biden was suffering from cognitive decline and was no longer capable of carrying out the duties of the presidency.
The critique has extended beyond the campaign trail. A walkway leading to the Oval Office that displays presidential portraits includes a framed image of an autopen in Biden’s place — a reference to Trump’s repeated claims that Biden was too impaired to personally approve official actions, leading his staff to rely on a mechanical signature device. There is no evidence for this assertion, and Biden has strongly denied it.
But Trump’s repeated references to Biden’s age played into broader public concerns that shadowed much of the older man’s presidency. When Biden turned 80, Democrats had just defied expectations in the midterm elections, blunting a widely anticipated Republican “red wave,” briefly easing Democrats’ concerns about his age.
But those concerns came roaring back 19 months later. In a June 27, 2024, debate against Trump, Biden appeared halting and at times struggled to complete sentences, setting off a crisis among Democrats. Twenty-four days later, he ended his reelection campaign, capping one of the most dramatic reversals in modern presidential history.
Before the Trump era, presidential birthdays were rarely public spectacles. Even milestone years were typically observed as personal occasions rather than civic rituals, moments when the world’s most visible office briefly gave way to private life.
Presidents have celebrated with family dinners, White House cakes and quiet gatherings. When George W. Bush turned 60, he marked the occasion at Camp David with family and friends. Barack Obama spent several birthdays in office with small celebrations involving family, staff and longtime supporters. The events generally passed without parades, mass audiences or nationally televised celebrations.
When Ronald Reagan — the oldest president in American history until Biden — turned 70, congressional leaders gathered in the Oval Office to sing “Happy Birthday,” and first lady Nancy Reagan hosted an East Room celebration featuring Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart. The festivities were glamorous by White House standards, but largely a private affair.
Biden’s instinct was never to turn age into a public statement. He entered politics as a 30-year-old senator in 1973 amid questions about his youth and inexperience; he left it 51 years later amid questions about his age and acuity.
Perhaps partly as a result, Biden generally treated birthdays as family milestones rather than public events. When he turned 70, in the afterglow of Obama’s reelection campaign, he held no major public celebration, rally or spectacle to mark the occasion.
Trump’s approach has often been the opposite. Long before entering politics, he used birthdays as public performances of status, celebrity and power. His 50th birthday was celebrated amid the gilded glitz of 1990s Trump Tower, surrounded by celebrities, socialites and the trappings of New York wealth.
The Biden-Trump contrast reflects a change in American culture, as brash self-promotion has become less of a political taboo and, if anything, often seems to be a path to power. But it also is a function of the fundamental makeup of the two men.
“In some ways it’s a metaphor of who they are, of Biden preferring to be generally low-key and not comfortable in such a public celebration in the same way that Trump is,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project and a professor emerita of political science at Towson University.
“Trump likes activity — in the middle of the night, he can be posting on Truth Social,” Kumar added. “He likes to be on the phone. He likes to greet people. It doesn’t appear as if he has a lot of quiet hours. And no matter what a president is going to do on their birthday, when you’re that age, the public is going to notice.”
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