For years Donald Trump has built his brand around boundless energy – the guy who brags he barely sleeps and still outworks everyone. He’s spent the last couple of years hammering Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” even hanging a giant photo of Biden’s autopen in the White House instead of the usual presidential portrait. “He sleeps all the time – day, night, on the beach,” Trump loved to say. “I’m not a sleeper.”
Well, the internet had a field day yesterday because the 79-year-old president looked like he could have used a nap himself.
It happened during Tuesday’s full Cabinet meeting – a whopping two hours and seventeen minutes long. Trump had everyone go around the table bragging about what they’d accomplished in the first year of his second term. About ninety minutes in, as various secretaries were talking, cameras caught the president with his eyes half-closed, head tilting a little. Classic “fighting the nod” look we’ve all had in a long boring meeting.
Social media lit up immediately. “Commander in Sleep,” “Dozy Don,” and plenty of side-by-side clips of Trump mocking Biden for the exact same thing started flying around.
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wasn’t having it. She fired back that the president was “listening attentively” the whole time and ran the entire “three-hour marathon” himself (someone’s watch was running a bit fast). She told reporters to go rewatch Trump’s closing remarks tearing into “radical Somali migrants” and certain Democratic lawmakers if they wanted proof he was sharp as ever.
Health questions have been dogging Trump lately – Minnesota Governor Tim Walz even challenged him to release an MRI. The White House did just that on Monday, calling the results “perfectly normal.” Trump himself brushed the whole thing off in the meeting: “I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong… Right now I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago – but who the hell knows.”
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Love him or hate him, the clip is pure karma for anyone who remembers the endless “Sleepy Joe” jokes. The internet never forgets – and it definitely never sleeps.
