President Donald Trump struggled to make it through a lengthy Cabinet meeting without a bit of shut-eye on the job.
The 79-year-old told reporters he was “sharper than I was 25 years ago” before being pictured nodding off several times as his loyal Cabinet members regularly praised him during the lengthy meeting.
It comes after Trump being busted for micro-sleeps last month at a press conference on weight-loss drugs. His nemesis, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, posted a video of a sleepy Trump with the caption, “DOZY DON IS BACK!”
Trump used Tuesday’s meeting, which ran for almost two and a half hours, to complain about the media’s focus on his health, which is rooted in his being the oldest person ever to be elected to the presidency.
He fired off his usual insult about “Sleepy Joe” Biden, before telling the assembled media they should be more interested in his border closures, rather than speculating about his health.
Trump moaned to reporters, “You’d think they’d say ‘Well, Trump’s done a great job on the border’…. but you always find something new. Like, ‘Is he in good health? Biden was great, but is Trump in good health?’
“I sit here, I do four news conferences a day, I answer questions from very intelligent lunatics, you people. And I always give the right answers. There’s never a scandal. There’s never a problem,“ he said.
“I give you answers that solve your little problems. You go back and you can’t find anything, but you do stories about ‘Biden was in wonderful health’.”
Trump said of his own health, “I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong. There will be some day that’s going to happen to all of us. But right now, I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago. But who the hell knows?”
When he wasn’t talking, Trump appeared to struggle, possibly because he had spent the previous night in a Truth Social rant, posting over 160 times.
While Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed “the most transformational year in American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War—at least,” Trump rolled his head forward and closed his eyes.
The Washington Post calculated that Trump had closed his eyes for extended periods or struggled to keep them open for nearly six cumulative minutes.
At one point, Trump appeared to doze off, and his eyelids drooped as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tried to explain his part in the “Kill everyone” scandal.
“Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat,” Hegseth said of the attack on a drug boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2. “It was the right call. We have his back.”
Hegseth admitted he did not personally see survivors clinging to the wreckage as was reported before the second strike.
“The thing was on fire. It was exploded in fire and smoke. You can’t see anything. You got digital,” he argued. “This is called the fog of war.”
The president spent most of the meeting with his hands planted under the desk. A Getty photographer did catch a sleepy Trump touching his face, revealing two Band-Aids on his right hand.
His right hand is usually smothered in makeup to cover persistent bruising.
Trump has been attempting to hide his bruised hand this year after it raised questions about the state of his health, employing tricks including putting his left hand on top of his right.
The White House has consistently referred questions about the bruising to a medical report released on July 17, which said the president had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency.
They said it was a “benign and common condition” usually seen in individuals over 70.
During the final Cabinet meeting of the year, Trump took time to once again slam a New York Times article that stated he is showing signs of aging and has also significantly reduced his workload in his second term.
The president has repeatedly referred to the report since its publication. After the article, a furious Trump replied on Truth Social, calling the article a “hit piece” and that he was not losing his energy.
Referencing the Times article, he slipped into the third person to state, “Trump is sharp, but they’re not sharp.”
However, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that Trump was nothing less than engaged during the Cabinet meeting.
“President Trump was listening attentively and running the entire three-hour marathon Cabinet meeting,” she told the Daily Beast in a statement.
“Just go back and watch his amazing final answer in the press conference, where he ripped into the America-Last Democrats for allowing radical Somali migrants to invade our country and steal from American taxpayers,” Leavitt continued.
Leavitt concluded, “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.”
The post See Every Angle of Donald Trump, 79, Nodding Off in His Own Cabinet Meeting appeared first on The Daily Beast.
