Fox News made a desperate attempt to defend President Trump after he appeared to nod off during a meeting for the second time in a month, even comparing him to a genius inventor.
Trump, 79, appeared to catch a few tactical winks throughout a Cabinet meeting, but unfortunately, the media was in the room.
Dr. Marc Siegel, Senior Medical Analyst for Fox News, managed to spin this as an apparent sign of Trump’s bright mind. Speaking on The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham said she often closes her eyes when people are talking, and Siegel compared the president to a great inventor.
“Thomas Edison believed in the 10-minute nap, by the way. We wouldn’t have electricity, right?” he declared. Edison invented the incandescent lightbulb, not electricity.
Photographers and camera operators captured images of the president struggling to keep his eyes open, even as his team spoke directly to him.
Less than a month ago, Trump faced a similar issue as he appeared to doze off during a press conference about drug prices in the Oval Office.
But Ingraham thinks that the leader of the free world nodding off during meetings is much ado about nothing. She claimed that Trump had his eyes closed for just a few seconds, despite a Washington Post analysis revealing that the actual amount of time was nearly six minutes, across nine separate instances.
The Fox News chyron, meanwhile, labeled Trump the “unstoppable president.”
When she invited Siegel to give his take, he initially ranted about Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, before segueing into Trump’s all-around health, which, of course, he said was excellent.
“This is a disgrace because we don’t need to see President Trump passing cognitive tests, as you just said he passes one every single day. Every single moment, going in and out of press conferences. I have never seen anything like it, actually,” Siegel said, praising the president’s ability in meetings, failing to mention that he appeared to be asleep in one.
Ingraham then defended the president by saying she sometimes closes her eyes when people talk. “We all know that he doesn’t sleep, you know, I’m not a big sleeper either. So, you know, on occasion, I close my eyes if someone is talking for too long, I admit it. But, big deal. I mean, the results speak for themselves.
“What President Trump does on a daily basis, if you sleep three hours or four hours a night, you’re probably going to close your eyes, whether you are 79 or 49. I don’t think that matters.”
Siegel then rolled out his Thomas Edison comparison.
Trump’s mid-work power nap comes after the White House desperately tried to prove he’s not slowing down by releasing his private work hours. Trump’s team gave details to the New York Post after the New York Times claimed the president was showing “signs of fatigue.”
The documents given to the MAGA-friendly paper claimed that Trump works 12-hour days, much more than what is shown to the public.
In her defense of Trump, Ingraham mentioned that Trump doesn’t sleep. This is a line propagated by MAGA figures, often used as a boast. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on The Katie Miller Podcast in October that “none of the White House team can keep up with him.”
Miller separately corroborated the general take on the president’s sleeplessness. “The president doesn’t sleep,” the podcaster and former Trump official told Laura Ingraham on Fox News.
“I don’t know how he does it,” Bondi said. “None of us know when he sleeps. He’s working all the time.”
Vice President JD Vance told My View With Lara Trump that Trump “doesn’t have an off switch.”
No wonder, then, he chanced a few minutes of shut-eye during the Cabinet meeting.
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