Although Donald Trump is only three years younger than Joe Biden, the mainstream media has largely focused on Biden’s age (and not Trump’s age), particularly throughout Biden’s presidency and his campaign to run for a second term (against Trump) until he formally dropped out of the 2024 presidential race in July. And, when the mainstream media does talk about Trump’s age, there are notable differences in how the media talks about it, as seen in coverage of Trump after he won the election last month.

Let’s start with the coverage of Biden’s age which spiked in the week following his debate with Trump on June 27, which is shown in the Media Bias Detector. Here is the average tone of the articles about Biden’s age during that week:

In total, 420 overwhelmingly negative articles were published on Biden’s age by the ten publishers the Media Bias Detector tracks within a week of the Biden-Trump debate. Coverage suggesting that Biden was too old to run after his disastrous debate performance led to increases in scrutiny concerning his mental fitness and eventual dropping out of the race.

In contrast, following the second debate between Harris and Trump, which according to most pundits Trump lost, there was very little coverage on Trump’s age; indeed, there were so few articles on his age that it did not register on the Media Bias Detector Events page following the debate on September 10. Instead, the debate-related coverage in the week afterwards was focused on Harris’s strong performance and Trump’s lies regarding immigrant communities

Even coverage that wasn’t explicitly about age, such as coverage of gaffes, reveals a bias in how slip ups are perceived depending on who was responsible. For example, on January 19, Trump referred to Nikki Haley as Nancy Pelosi at his Concord, New Hampshire rally, and two months later at another rally, he mixed up Biden with former President Obama. However, none of the above events received enough coverage to be featured under the events page of the Media Bias Detector. In contrast, when Biden mistakenly referred to Ukrainian President Zelensky as “President Putin,” and then quickly corrected himself, the event generated extensive coverage on the Events page on July 11 and July 12, as seen below.

Jumping forward to November 6, these were Top Facts for articles covering Trump winning the election, which talk about his age very differently compared to when they talked about Biden’s age.

Clicking on the facts underlines takes you to these headlines:

Wall Street Journal: Trump Defeats Harris, Making Historical Comeback

and CNN: Trump will win second term, CNN projects, in historic comeback after losing four years ago

From the tone of these headlines, Trump winning the election at his age is framed as an accomplishment and not a liability. These outlets liken Trump’s win as a testament to his resilience, having lost the previous election and surviving an assassination attempt during his campaign. Right-leaning outlets such Fox News in particular often talk about Trump’s stamina, actively denying that his age or mental acuity will become a problem during his second term.

In contrast, left-leaning outlets talked negatively about Biden’s age, believing that it was a limitation that could prevent the Democratic party from winning the 2024 Election. Even after the election, the media is still talking about Biden’s age; notably the tone for all recent articles is negative by all top ten publishers featured on our Media Bias Detector except for Huffington Post. Within a month post-election, 88 articles written by ten news outlets have been published as seen in this screengrab taken from Biden’s Age coverage from 11/6-12/17.

There is no doubt that Biden’s age and the scrutiny he faced partly played a role in defining his presidency, as the media pushed the narrative that Biden was just too senile to be our president and the nickname “Sleepy Joe” became popularized by Trump. In comparison, Trump's signs of mental decline were overshadowed, giving readers the perception that he was more fit than Biden despite the fact that their health should be equally concerning to the media given their similar ages (and the fact that Biden is actually more physically fit than Trump).