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President Donald Trump leads the youngest group of top Cabinet officials and advisers of any president in more than three decades. Age was a central issue in the 2024 campaign, with voters expressing deep concerns about former President Joe Biden’s ability to begin a new term at 82. However, Trump is now the oldest person ever sworn in as president.
Watch the video above as Straight Arrow News contributor Matthew Continetti argues that Trump has defied the stereotype of Republicans as the party of seniors, instead leading a youth movement that could shape politics for decades to come.
The following is an excerpt from the above video:
In staffing this administration, Trump skipped over the Reagan-Bush governing class to create a new echelon of GOP leaders. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is 27 years old. Vice President JD Vance is 40 years old. U.N. ambassador-designee Elise Stefanik is the same age.
Director of National Intelligence-designate Tulsi Gabbard is 44. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is 45. OMB chief Russell Vought is 49. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy are both 54. Attorney General Pam Bondi is 59 but looks a lot younger. The oldest Trump cabinet pick is Linda McMahon, born in 1948. Her mission? Put herself out of a job by closing the Department of Education. There’s no better task for the former CEO of WWE than a bureaucratic smackdown.
GOP congressional leadership has changed too. Speaker Mike Johnson is 53 years old and arrived in Washington, DC, along with Trump in 2017. Senate majority leader John Thune, 64, is decades younger than his predecessor. And Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Republican conference as well as the Intelligence Committee, is 47. That’s a toddler in Senate years.
“Most of them aren’t old enough to rent a car,” 77-year-old Hillary Clinton says of Elon Musk’s twenty-something employees at the Department of Government Efficiency. This the same woman whose 1969 Wellesley commencement address was a paean to youthful dissent, searching and renewal. Now she’s checking IDs.
The Democrats lecture and scold. Trump offers opportunity through disruption. The GOP’s baby-faced bulldozers are just getting started, and they won’t be denied.
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