It’s bedtime for Bozo—and also you’re paying the value.
President Donald Trump attends a cupboard assembly on the White Home in Washington, DC, on December 2, 2025.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Photographs)
One in all Donald Trump’s most profitable political ways has been labeling his opponents as too bodily enervated to deal with the job of the presidency. In 2016, Trump immortally smeared Jeb Bush as “low vitality” (a cost that doomed Bush’s marketing campaign) and framed Hillary Clinton as missing in “stamina” (a jibe supercharged with sexism). In 2019, Trump coined the nickname “Sleepy Joe” for Joe Biden. Initially, this insult didn’t resonate with the voters, who handed Biden a convincing victory over Trump in 2020. Sadly, Biden himself lent credence to the “Sleepy Joe” taunt as he grew to become visibly extra timeworn throughout his presidency—a decline that culminated within the stammering, incoherent performance that destroyed his reelection possibilities for good in 2024.
Biden’s embarrassing decrepitude couldn’t have been luckier for Trump. Not solely did it result in the tip of his reelection bid—it additionally helped Trump look vigorous and wholesome by comparability. However now, a yr into his second time period, there is no such thing as a Biden to distract the general public from the plain fact—that Trump is at the least as low-energy and sleepy as any of his rivals.
In his speeches and press conferences, Trump often digresses into chaotic verbal nonsense. However speaking disjointedly at the least retains Trump, who has a narcissistic love of being on the focal point, alert. But, as a string of current movies has proven, when Trump has to hearken to different folks converse, his mind tends to lapse right into a default mode of somnolence.
Even the mainstream media, which has been negligently reluctant to boost questions on Trump’s bodily and psychological well-being, has began to take be aware. On Friday, The Washington Put up reported,
President Donald Trump closed his eyes for prolonged intervals as Cupboard officers went across the room Tuesday offering updates on their work, at occasions seeming to nod off.
It was the second time in lower than a month that Trump has appeared to battle to remain awake as his advisers converse concerning the administration’s initiatives. A Washington Put up evaluation of a number of video feeds of the assembly Tuesday confirmed that in 9 separate situations, Trump’s eyes have been closed for prolonged intervals or he appeared to battle to maintain them open, amounting cumulatively to just about six minutes. The episode was just like an Oval Workplace occasion on Nov. 6 when the president spent practically 20 minutes battling to keep his eyes open.
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This model of Trump—let’s name it Sleepy Donald—just isn’t new. In April of 2024, whereas Trump sat in a Manhattan courtroom dealing with legal fees in a hush-money trial, he often had problem staying alert. As The New York Instances reported, “Trump appeared to nod off a couple of occasions, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest.”
Trump’s rising lethargy has additionally considerably affected his each day schedule, because the Instances documented final month:
Trump’s first official occasion begins later within the day. In 2017, the primary yr of his first time period, Mr. Trump’s scheduled occasions began at 10:31 a.m. on common. Against this, Mr. Trump in his second time period has began scheduled occasions within the afternoon on common, at 12:08 p.m. His occasions finish on common at across the identical time as they did in the course of the first yr of his first time period, shortly after 5 p.m.
The variety of Mr. Trump’s complete official appearances has decreased by 39 p.c. In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official occasions between Jan. 20 and Nov. 25 of that yr. For that very same time interval this yr, Mr. Trump has appeared in 1,029 official occasions.
It will be regarding sufficient if Trump merely wanted much more naptime. Nevertheless it’s worse than that. He’s typically up very late at night time, posting relentlessly on social media, solely to taper off in the course of the day. That is the type of sleep sample you would possibly discover in your common teenager or cocaine addict—in different phrases, not the form of conduct you need in a president. Actually, it’s worrying that the person who has his finger on a nuclear arsenal that may destroy all life on earth is maintaining such irregular hours.
To make certain, when Trump is genuinely engaged with an occasion, he can enliven. Trump appeared uncharacteristically peppy in a current assembly with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a political foe who nonetheless unusually energized the president. Equally, Trump discovered a brand new spring in his step when receiving the transparently fraudulent FIFA Peace Prize, a bauble created by a corrupt soccer league and designed to please the president’s infantile love of shiny trinkets. However these occasions are the exception; more often than not, Trump has grow to be ever extra lumbering, gradual, irritable, and drowsy.
Trump and his supporters have responded to investigations into his well being and application with surly denials and makes an attempt at distraction. Trump has gone again to drawing a distinction between himself and his rivals. In November, Trump said Biden “broke each file. He sleeps on a regular basis, in the course of the day, in the course of the night time, on the seaside.” Ted Cruz, descending right into a sycophancy that’s ridiculous even for him, defended the president by saying, “I don’t assume [Trump] sleeps in any respect.” Different presidential cronies have additionally made patently absurd claims about Trump’s vitality.
Trump is much from the primary president to struggle a dropping battle to maintain awake. His predecessors William Howard Taft (president from 1909 to 1913) and Calvin Coolidge (1923–29) have been additionally impressively inclined towards fatigue. Ronald Reagan (1981–89)—who would drift off to slumberland throughout cupboard conferences—additionally deserves a spot within the Mount Rushmore of napping presidents. Curiously, all three males have been, like Trump, big-business conservatives.
As The Washington Put up noted in 2003, Taft “as soon as fell asleep whereas speaking head to head with Joseph Cannon, the speaker of the Home. He did the identical with the French ambassador’s spouse. He nodded off whereas signing papers, attending the opera and standing in assessment of troops. He was probably the most clearly sleepy particular person to ever inhabit the White Home.” Historians have speculated that Taft suffered from sleep apnea, a by-product of his infamous portliness.
Now we have no actual measure of presidential sleepiness, however Calvin Coolidge, who stayed in mattress for 9 hours an evening and napped for at the least two within the afternoon, was a contender for the title of most dormant commander in chief. In an obituary, H.L. Mencken, the premier journalistic wit of his age, argued that Coolidge “slept greater than some other President, whether or not by day or by night time. Nero fiddled, however Coolidge solely snored.” Mencken speculated that if Coolidge had ruled in the course of the Nice Melancholy, he “would have responded to unhealthy occasions exactly as he responded to good ones—that’s, by flattening the blinds, stretching his legs upon his desk, and snoozing away the lazy afternoons.”
Mencken was an ardent advocate of laissez-faire authorities, so for him the sleepiness of Coolidge was a advantage. Mencken doubtless felt the identical method about Taft’s heavy-lidded presidency.
However Trump provides the mislead the concept that a president who tunes out is sweet for the nation. In Trump’s case, there may be little aid in the truth that he himself is checked out and prefers to spend his dotage garishly remaking the White Home and accepting items which can be transparently bribes. That’s as a result of, whereas Trump could also be inactive, his minions actually aren’t. He’s surrounded himself with a crew of extremists, notably Stephen Miller, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio. These underlings have been empowered by Trump’s lack of curiosity in authorities. It’s allowed them to pursue harsh insurance policies of immigration restriction, deregulation, and militarism. Together with his fading thoughts and lack of curiosity in governance, Trump has been capable of ignore criticism of those insurance policies. Removed from being a benign private foible, Trump’s tiredness is a serious motive his second time period is shaping as much as be a good larger catastrophe than his first.
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