At the start of a Cabinet meeting just after noon ET on Tuesday, President Donald Trump made his apparently obligatory reference to “Sleepy Joe” Biden.
He then assured that he was “stronger than I was 25 years ago,” while reprimanding The New York Times for a long and detailed story last week that explained how the 79-year-old president appears to have declined in his second term.
“Trump is sharp, but they’re not sharp,” Trump said of the newspaper.
Trump chastised the reporters for what he called unfair treatment of his health and stamina, adding, “You guys are crazy.”
But over the next hour and a half, Trump struggled to embody the drive and power he had just professed.
In fact, he seemed to fight a long battle and often lose by midday. Even as his Cabinet was gathered to engage in one of his favorite activities – singing Trump’s praises – he repeatedly appeared to be pleased.
It was the kind of scene, in fact, that Trump once derided as evidence of a president’s lack of stamina and fitness for the job.
About 15 minutes into his sidelines against health and fitness reporting, Trump appeared to be struggling to keep his eyes open as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick praised his trade wars and hailed “the greatest Cabinet ever for the greatest president ever.”
Trump’s blinking appeared to slow down gradually as he heard from Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and then Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. The struggle became even more real when he heard from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.
Until Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke, Trump appeared frozen with his eyes closed for 10 to 15 seconds at a time, before finally moving his eyes or giving a wink.
Just before 1:45 pm ET, he gave the same treatment to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as Rubio praised Trump’s efforts to end wars. Except this time Trump’s apparent dozing was more evident because he was sitting right next to the secretary, and the cameras were zoomed in on both of them. (Previous speakers have been more distant from Trump.)
At the end of Rubio’s monologue, the secretary of state cracked a joke about how we are now at “the most 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 on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed Trump was “listening intently and conducting the entire marathon three-hour Cabinet meeting.” She praised him for holding nine Cabinet meetings this year and for an “exclamation point” answer during a Q&A when he attacked Democrats and Somali immigrants.
“In all of these historic meetings, the president and his incredible team highlight the exhaustive list of accomplishments they have delivered on behalf of the American people to Make America Great Again,” said Leavitt.
It was the second time in less than a month that Trump appeared to carry out this very powerful battle at a White House event. The last one came on November 6, in the Oval Office. After that, the Washington Post reviewed several videos and calculated that Trump spent almost 20 minutes fighting to keep his eyes open.
Images of Trump dozing off during that event — images even clearer than Tuesday’s because of the camera angles available in the Oval — quickly went viral.
The point is not that a 79-year-old man who spins is a sign of serious health concerns or even that it’s all that noticeable. As Leavitt noted, Trump took a series of questions after Rubio spoke. And it is indisputable that he made himself much more available to the press than his predecessor. He also appeared to have a late night and early morning before the Cabinet meeting, posting on Truth Social before 5:30 am after sharing posts about immigration, Venezuela and other topics close to midnight. (Indeed, he had posted several dozen times the night before.)
But these types of scenes are becoming more prevalent.
And as is often the case, Trump made himself a victim of the standards he set for the presidency. Not only has he repeatedly labeled Biden “Sleepy Joe” because of Biden’s lack of activity; he often ragged on Biden to literally sleep – and sleeping on camera.
Trump dismissed such a scene as unbecoming of a president and a sign of Biden’s disengagement, at least when the shoe was on the other foot.
In 2021, after Biden was seen sleeping at a climate conference in Scotland, Trump said in an email: “No one with true enthusiasm and belief in a subject ever sleeps!”
Trump continued to criticize Biden on the subject in 2022 and 2023.
After Biden’s vibrant State of the Union in early 2024, Trump said that “most of the time, it’s like he’s sleeping.”
In June 2024, shortly before Biden’s disastrous debate performance, Trump mocked the then-president for appearing sleepy after traveling overseas, saying, “He sleeps at every event.”
As late as the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly brought up Biden sleeping on the beach. Trump seemed to view this as particularly inappropriate and strange.
“How do you sleep when the cameras are rolling, right?” he said at one point in September 2024.
He told podcast host Andrew Schulz in the same month: “You’ll never see me sleeping on camera.”
If sleeping in meetings was a sign that Biden lacked “enthusiasm and belief,” why didn’t the same standard apply to Trump?
Of course, when it comes to health questions, context is key. There is no doubt that Biden presented as much older than Trump, and that those around Biden obscure his deterioration. Biden has not maintained anything close to the schedule or public presence that Trump does today, even as Trump’s appearances and domestic travel, as the Times noted, have decreased. (His foreign travel, however, has increased so far this term.)
But Trump has also 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 his October medical imaging of his cardiovascular and abdominal systems — after the president claimed he didn’t even know on which part of the body it was done.)
During Trump’s first term, Dr. Harold Bornstein, who had written a glowing letter about his health in 2015, said that Trump had “dictated that entire letter.” The letter implausibly claimed that Trump would be “the fittest person ever elected to the presidency,” even though he was close to 70 at the time and famously close to exercise.
Those kinds of things will raise suspicions and legitimize investigations like the Times, especially as the president shows more signs of age.
Just like calling someone “Sleepy Joe” ad nauseam will make it all the more noticeable when Trump can’t seem to shake his own sleepiness.
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