President Donald Trump admitted he closed his eyes during his last Cabinet meeting because he was so bored during the marathon suck-up session.
Trump, 79, held his latest meeting with top administration officials on Thursday. He said he would keep the gathering shorter than the previous one after he appeared to doze off in December.
But the president claimed he had not fallen asleep during the last meeting; he simply closed his eyes.
“The last time we had a press conference, it lasted for three hours, and some people said he closed his eyes. Look, it got pretty boring,” Trump said.
During last month’s Cabinet meeting, Trump repeatedly closed his eyes as some of his top officials around the table spoke. On Thursday, he said not everyone would get a chance to heap their praises as usual.
“I love these people. There’s a lot of people. It was a little bit at the boring side, but I didn’t sleep,” Trump insisted on Thursday.
Trump went on about his moments of shuteye, “I just closed them because I wanted to get the hell out of here.”
The president noted that he does not sleep much. Trump has been known to rapidly post dozens of times in the middle of the night on Truth Social when most people are asleep.
“Some of them got me in a blink,” Trump claimed, despite his eyes being closed for more than just a moment, as was captured on video.
The president demonstrated how he blinked as his top advisers around the room looked on and laughed.
“You know when you go like,” Trump said, shutting his eyes. “And they took me at the closed segment of my cycle. They said, ‘he’s sleeping.’”
The president went on to joke that if he had been snoozing during the last meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who were seated on either side of him, would have woken him up.
“They’d be knocking me, ‘come on, you got to wake up, boss,’” Trump insisted.
However, one time Trump appeared to doze off during the last meeting was while Rubio was speaking. Trump could be seen next to him with his eyes shut for a prolonged period of time, with the cameras focused on him while the top diplomat spoke about the war in Ukraine. He also appeared to be struggling to keep his eyes open as Hegeth spoke at that meeting.
The president then declared they had “great meetings.”
Cabinet meetings are not the only televised events on which Trump has been caught with his eyes shut. He has been spotted with his eyes closed during roundtables as others spoke as well as at events inside the Oval Office.
Earlier this month, the president was captured with his eyes closed, sitting behind the Resolute desk, as some of his top officials spoke about the importance of whole milk.
Trump’s claim on Thursday, as he continues to face questions about his health as he approaches 80, was not the first time the president has insisted he was not sleeping his way through his December Cabinet meeting.
The president told New York magazine in an interview released this week that he had his eyes closed because the session was “boring as hell.”
“I have to sit back and listen, and I move my hand so that people will know I’m listening. I’m hearing every word, and I can’t wait to get out,” Trump said.
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