An earlier version of this article was published in the On the Trail 2024 newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox on Tuesday and Friday mornings here. To submit a question to next week’s Friday Mailbag, email onthetrail@deseretnews.com.

Good morning and welcome to On the Trail 2024, the Deseret News’ campaign newsletter. I’m Samuel Benson, Deseret’s national political correspondent.

3 things to know

1. Do Latter-day Saints think Donald Trump is a person of faith? Some do, though the proportion is much lower than Republicans nationally. While a Deseret News/HarrisX poll in December found that 62% of Republicans think Trump is a person of faith, only 41% of self-described “very active” Latter-day Saints registered as Republicans in Utah think so, according to a new poll. Read more here.

2. Can Trump be barred from the ballot? The Supreme Court will hear arguments next week in a landmark case to determine whether Trump is guilty of violating the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. “The odds are … in (Trump’s) favor by sheer constitutional math,” writes James C. Phillips, director of BYU’s Constitutional Government Initiative. Read more here.

3. The final 2024 presidential debate is scheduled for Salt Lake City in October. The University of Utah requested $6.5 million from the Utah Legislature this week to help prepare. The big question, though, is whether Trump — should he win the Republican nomination — will participate in any of the debates. “We’re still planning as if this is happening,” Jason Perry, director of the U.’s Hinckley Institute of Politics, said. Read more here.

The Big Idea

How old is too old to run for president?

For months, Nikki Haley has been hesitant to criticize Donald Trump. She’d criticize the trillions he added to the federal deficit, then quickly say she liked much of what he did as president; she’d say we need less “chaos,” but then refuse to condemn his alleged sexual assault.

But Haley trotted out a new attack line this week, one that she can tee up equally for Trump and President Joe Biden: calling them old.

A new Haley-backed ad series, titled “Grumpy Old Men,” attempts to portray Biden and Trump as aged, cold imbeciles. In a string of TV ads, online videos and voter emails, Haley’s team will push against Trump’s and Biden’s spoken gaffes and absence from the campaign trail, saying both are too old and too infirm to be president. One video will be titled “Stumbling Seniors,” The New York Times reports; others, “Basement Buddies” and “Profligate Pols.”

“Nearly 50% of Republicans and 70% of Americans don’t want to watch grumpy old men stumble across America when our country is on the brink and the world is on fire,” Olivia Perez-Cubas, a Haley spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Sadly, this version of grumpy old men offers no comic relief — just chaos, confusion and a bad sense of déjà vu for the American people.”

One thing is increasingly clear: Trump is not the candidate he was in 2016, and his age isn’t helping. At 77, Trump rambles on and on about Haley, confusing her with Nancy Pelosi. He speaks about Barack Obama as if the former president were still in office.

And Biden isn’t getting any younger, either. At 81, Biden became the oldest U.S. president ever on the day he took office, and his own verbal stumbles — only worsened by his stutter, which he has had since childhood — have elicited concerns. But he insists he feels younger than he is, leading even some friends and aides to roll their eyes. Some employees at the U.S. Treasury, perched above the White House in a nearby office building, can pick Biden out from other white-haired guests on the South Lawn by the president’s hunched-over shuffle.

So, yes, Haley is playing off a concern that many Americans already share: that Biden’s and Trump’s age and mental stamina should bar them from another term.

Haley is playing with fire, though. A significant portion of Republican voters are no younger than Biden or Trump; could her portrayals of the two as “grumpy, old men” make all of the older GOP voters grumpy, too? In last month’s Iowa caucuses, 4 in 10 Republican voters were over 65; in the New Hampshire primary, over 30% were. Republicans have won the “silver vote” — voters ages 60 and up — in every general election since 2000.

The new Haley strategy is a sign she’s willing to take on Trump head-on. But she needs to be careful to not wage war with older GOP voters in the process.

Have a question for the next Friday mailbag? Drop me a line at onthetrail@deseretnews.com.

See you on the trail.

Editor’s Note: The Deseret News is committed to covering issues of substance in the 2024 presidential race from its unique perspective and editorial values. Our team of political reporters will bring you in-depth coverage of the most relevant news and information to help you make an informed decision. Find our complete coverage of the election here.