Why older Americans are Trump’s biggest nightmare

That there’s a spasm of dislike for Trump’s chaotic presidency is not news — new polls show Americans unhappier with this president at 100 days than any of his predecessors. Much of the attention has focused on his rapidly falling numbers with young voters (“Is Gen Z abandoning Trump?” Newsweek asked last week), but we’re seeing signs — in the data and on the streets — of something that may be an even bigger problem for the MAGA world. Older Americans are increasingly repelled by this guy.

Numbers first: If you look at the internals of, say, the most recent Marist poll, he does worst among members of the oldest age cohort: Only 37% of the greatest/silent generation — people in their 80s and 90s — approve of the president’s performance. Baby boomers — those, like us, in our 60s and 70s — aren’t far behind, with only 41% giving him the nod, compared to very nearly half of Gen X.

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Meanwhile, anyone who’s taken part in protests against the administration around the nation can testify to the amount of gray hair in the crowd. We’ve marched in New York, New England and California in recent weeks, and large swaths of the crowd definitely qualify for senior discounts at the movies. Mark Engler, co-author of “This Is an Uprising,” about the rise of modern protest movements, wrote to us last week: “Here in Philly, the crowd made me feel like I was on the younger side, an increasingly rare experience now that I’m about to turn 50.”

All of this goes against the common wisdom: You’re supposed to get more conservative as you age, and isn’t Trump supposed to be taking people our age back to our happy youth by making America great again? But we aren’t surprised: We’ve spent the last three years organizing liberal and progressive Americans over the age of 60. They make it clear what’s going on.

Some issues are obvious: As Elon Musk and his minions mess with the Social Security Administration and the White House plans big Medicaid cuts, people of a certain age feel a rare combination of fear and anger. Two-thirds of older Americans rely on Social Security for more than half their income — we spent our entire working lives paying in, on the explicit promise that it would be there for us when we retire. Even those who have savings and investments are watching them tank amid Trump’s tariff chaos: If your 401k drops 10% when you’re 30, you may have a chance to make it back. But if you’re 75?

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And it goes deeper than dollars. Older voters watching Musk and Trump’s Cabinet dismantle the federal government understand why those agencies were built in the first place. If you’re 40, the Clean Air Act may seem a little abstract, but that’s because it’s worked so well. If you’re 70 or 80 you remember smog-choked cities and rivers that caught fire, and you have no idea why anyone would want them back.

That sentiment goes for all kinds of things. Lani Ritter-Hall, a board member of our organization, wrote recently of her memories of being a “Polio pioneer” in 1954, lining up for the shots that changed childhood for the better. “I have that special memory of participating in a grand scientific experiment to benefit humanity.” How do you think she feels watching RFK Jr. blather on about vaccines? (We’re old enough to remember Kennedy’s father, by the way, and to mourn how far the apple fell from the tree).

We know from experience why the country had DEI programs, because we remember Jim Crow and its vestiges in segregated schools and neighborhoods. When the government removes lessons about the Tuskegee Airmen from air force training, or purges Jackie Robinson from a Department of Defense website, these are not figures of the impossibly distant past to us; the visceral anger of those whose lives paralleled these people are why the government had to backtrack.

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Sometimes even the smallest things seem especially galling. President Trump’s celebration of the idea that henceforth kids would only have two dolls instead of 30 under the Christmas tree may be ridiculous (did anyone ever get 30 dolls for Christmas?) — but you know who really really likes spending their remaining money on toys? Grandparents.

One way of saying this is that the older you are, the longer your past, and so Trump’s assault on normalcy is especially egregious to us — we know he’s behaving in a way that no former president even imagined behaving.

Happily, we vote in higher numbers than any other age group, and we’ve got a longer future as activists than the president and his allies might imagine. If you turn 60 this year, chances are you’ll live another quarter century. Oh, and women — who dislike the president in larger numbers than men — will live longer still.

So expect another couple of decades of us causing good trouble, with all the skills and connections we’ve built over a lifetime. Trump is turning out to be our nightmare, and we’re more than willing to be his.

Akaya Windwood is a senior advisor at Third Act, which organizes older Americans for climate action and democracy protection. Bill McKibben is a founder of the group.