Photos Brutally Prove Trump's Famous Hair Has Started To Flop In His 70s

While Donald Trump was busy building a real estate empire, he was also carefully constructing a golden keratin tower that has fascinated the public for decades. At times, Trump's buzzworthy hair has seemed as solid as a slab of overcooked steak, something that's always on the menu at the tycoon-turned-politician's Mar-a-Lago club. But once he turned 70, his brassy mane started looking more fragile than a house of cards — or the Trump family's flimsy finances.

In his 1991 book "Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump — His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall," former Trump Plaza casino exec John R. O'Donnell claims that Donald has always been paranoid about his pate becoming barren. He writes (via The New Yorker) that Trump once said, "The worst thing a man can do is go bald. Never let yourself go bald."

There's been rampant speculation that Trump's odd hairstyle is specifically designed to hide a bald spot, and according to author Michael Wolff, Ivanka Trump has confirmed that the center of her dad's scalp is smooth. She also purportedly revealed that Trump uses Just for Men to achieve that distinctive hue. "The longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump's orange-blond hair color," Wolff writes in "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House." (Apparently, Ivanka never bothered telling her dad about purple shampoo or toner.) But Trump's hair really took a turn for the worst when he launched his political career.

Donald Trump turned 70 years old while running for president in 2016. He quickly got busy shaking hands and kissing babies while sporting a questionable hairstyle with a long, curled back and greasy side wings over his ears. The somewhat amateurish appearance of his haircut in the photo above might be his wife's fault; in a 2004 Playboy interview, Donald revealed that he only allows Melania Trump to take scissors to his precious tresses (via the New York Post).

This was the haircut Donald was sporting when he won the presidential election days later — somehow, many people bought what he was selling, despite the back of his head looking like Scrooge McDuck's backend.

There were so many things going wrong with Donald Trump's 'do during a 2017 White House meeting with Republican lawmakers. Not only had his hair been bleached into oblivion, but the front of his frizzy combover looked like a ledge on the verge of collapsing onto his forehead. His extra-crispy side wings were also doing him no favors — some feathery grays had escaped and were forming a fine net over his ears. 

Trump's former hairstylist on "The Apprentice," Amy Lasch, told the Mirror that he has a tendency to go overboard with the hairspray when styling his mane himself, which creates that stiff, wet look. "Everything was solid. It was matted to stay put," she said of her days wrangling Trump's hair.

Donald Trump's teased nest was looking a bit deflated during a 2019 appearance at a church in Virginia, after it collapsed under the weight of one of his caps. On "All In," MSNBC's Chris Hayes noted that Trump had been playing golf before entering the church, and he seemed to remember that it was poor etiquette to wear a baseball hat inside one of the holy places at the last minute. 

With his hair flattened and swooped back, Trump bore an uncanny resemblance to the older version of the villainous Biff Tannen in "Back to the Future Part II." There's a reason for this — one of the film's screenwriters, Bob Gale, told the Daily Beast that the bully was inspired by The Donald himself.

Donald Trump didn't give his crowning glory much of a break from being forced into its fluffy cloud shape after his 2021 White House exit. Soon, he was hitting the campaign trail again, and the wear and tear on his hair became impossible to hide.

During a 2023 speech at the Faith and Freedom Road to Majority conference, Trump's hair looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane. Flyaways were pointing in all different directions, and his noticeably thinning sides were quite damp — but at least he hadn't asked for the Rudy Giuliani special at his old pal's barbershop. If only Trump had a Sharpie handy to fix the path of the storm that wrecked his combover.

Donald Trump arguably experienced some of his worst hair days when he entered his political era, especially when he had to make courtroom appearances for his misbehavior during his first presidential bid. At his hush-money trial in May 2024, he was photographed with disheveled, wispy hair that looked as if it had been brushed with steel wool. The cameras also captured some unflattering angles of his head, as seen below:

Pool/Getty

Trump spent an exorbitant sum on his hair during his "Apprentice" years, which may explain why it didn't seem to receive as much scrutiny during that time. As for his hair's sorry state in court, perhaps Trump finally encountered a situation that made him forget about his vanity for once.