At the beginning of a Cabinet meeting just after noon ET on Tuesday, President Donald Trump essentially referred to “Sleepy Joe” Biden.
He then assured that he was “faster than I was 25 years ago,” while rebuking The New York Times for a long and detailed story last week detailing how the 79-year-old president has slowed down during his second term.
“Trump is sharp, but he’s not sharp,” Trump said of the newspaper.
Trump chided reporters for their inappropriate behavior regarding his health and stamina, saying, “You guys are crazy.”
But for the next hour and a half, Trump struggled to embrace the fire and power he had just boasted about.
In fact, he seemed to be fighting a long and often losing battle with the afternoon nap. Even when his Cabinet gathered to engage in one of his favorite activities — singing Trump’s praises — he repeatedly appeared to be dozing off.
In fact, it was the kind of scene Trump once ridiculed as evidence of his lack of stamina and fitness for the job of president.
About 15 minutes after his sweeping stance against health and wellness reporting, Trump appeared to be struggling to keep his eyes open as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick praised his trade wars and lauded “the greatest Cabinet the greatest president has ever had.”
Trump’s blinks became progressively slower after hearing from Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and then Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. The struggle became even more real when they heard from Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.
By the time Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke, Trump appeared frozen, closing his eyes for 10 to 15 seconds at a time, before moving his eyes or nodding.
Just before 1:45 p.m. ET, he treated Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the same treatment, as Rubio praised Trump’s efforts to end the wars. Except this time Trump’s apparent wink was more obvious because he was sitting right next to the secretary, and the cameras were zooming in on both of them. (Previous speakers were more distant from Trump.)
At the end of Rubio’s monologue, the Secretary of State joked that we are now “at the most wonderful, magical time of the year. And by that, of course, I’m referring to the College Football Playoff.”
If Trump heard the joke, he barely showed it.
Asked about the scene Tuesday, White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said Trump was “listening attentively and running a three-hour marathon Cabinet meeting.” He praised her for holding nine cabinet meetings this year and for her “exclamation point” answers during questions and answers when she attacked Democrats and Somali immigrants.
“In each of these historic meetings, the President and his incredible team highlighted the extensive list of accomplishments we have delivered on behalf of the American people to Make America Great Again,” Leavitt said.
This was the second time in less than a month that Trump was seen waging this highly visible fight during a White House event. Last came to the Oval Office on 6 November. After that, The Washington Post reviewed multiple video feeds and calculated that Trump had spent about 20 minutes struggling to keep his eyes open.
Images of Trump dozing off during that event – even clearer than Tuesday’s images due to the camera angles available in the Oval – soon went viral.
The issue isn’t whether a 79-year-old man’s napping is a sign of any serious health concern or is actually that notable. As Leavitt said, Trump asked several questions after Rubio spoke. And it is undeniable that he has made himself far more available to the press than his predecessor. He also appears to have had a late night and early morning hours before the Cabinet meeting, sharing posts on immigration, Venezuela and other topics around midnight and then posting on Truth Social before 5:30 a.m. (In fact, he posted several dozen times last night.)
But these types of scenes are apparently becoming more prevalent.
And as is so often the case, Trump has made himself a victim of the standards set for the presidency. Not only did he repeatedly label Biden “Sleepy Joe” because of Biden’s lack of activity; He often got angry at Biden literally to sleep – And falling asleep on camera,
Trump described such a scene as unbecoming of a president and a sign of Biden’s detachment, at least when the shoe was on the other foot.
In 2021, after Biden appeared to sleep at a climate conference in Scotland, Trump said in an email: “Anyone who has true passion and belief in a subject will never sleep!”
Trump continued to criticize Biden on this topic in 2022 and 2023.
After Biden’s lively State of the Union address at the start of 2024, Trump said that “most of the time, he looks like he’s sleeping.”
In June 2024, shortly before Biden’s disastrous debate performance, Trump ridiculed the then-President for appearing sleepy after traveling abroad, saying, “He falls asleep at every single event.”
By the end of the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly spotted Biden sleeping on the beach. Trump appears to find this particularly inappropriate and bizarre.
“How do you fall asleep when the cameras are blaring, right?” He said at one point in September 2024.
He told podcast host Andrew Schultz the same month: “You’ll never see me falling asleep on camera.”
If falling asleep in meetings is a sign that Biden lacks “enthusiasm and confidence,” why wouldn’t the same standard apply to Trump?
Of course, when it comes to health questions, context matters. There is no doubt that Biden has presented far more elderly people than Trump, and those around Biden have obscured his decline. As the Times notes, Biden did not keep anything close to Trump’s schedule or public appearances today, even as Trump’s attendance and domestic travel has declined. (However, their foreign travel has increased so far during this period.)
But Trump has also long been opaque about his health, including releasing hyperbolic letters from his doctors and resisting full disclosure about his medical visits as president — including a recent MRI. (The White House this week finally released a summary of the October medical imaging of his heart and abdominal system — after the president claimed he didn’t even know what part of the body the test was performed on.)
During Trump’s first term, Dr. Harold Bornstein, who wrote a scathing letter about his health in 2015, said Trump “dictated that entire letter.” The letter implausibly claimed that Trump would be “the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency”, despite the fact that he was nearly 70 at the time and famous for exercising.
This kind of thing is going to raise suspicion and legitimize an investigation like the Times’s, especially as the President shows more signs of age.
Just like calling someone “Sleepy Joe” will make it more noticeable when Trump can’t shake off his sleepiness.
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