President Trump said on Thursday that he had appeared to be fighting sleep during a cabinet meeting last month because “it got pretty boring, no offense.”
Mr. Trump, at the start of his first cabinet meeting of 2026, maintained that he had not actually fallen asleep at December’s meeting, but that he had closed his eyes “because I wanted to get the hell out of there.” He added, “I don’t sleep much, let me tell you.”
Mr. Trump’s allies had strenuously insisted that Mr. Trump had been alert and attentive during last month’s meeting. Even so, the president acknowledged to a reporter for New York magazine that he had closed his eyes, saying that the meeting had been “boring as hell.”
As he characterized last month’s cabinet meeting — which lasted 2 hours 18 minutes — as a grueling, dull affair, Mr. Trump echoed the observations of critics who note that much of the time is devoted to his advisers offering lengthy, fawning praise for the president and his achievements. At one point in last month’s meeting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested that Mr. Trump had “kept the hurricanes away.”
On Thursday, Mr. Trump expressed his “love” for the members of his cabinet. “But there’s a lot of people,” he said. “It was a little bit on the boring side.” This time, he insisted, “we are not going to go through the whole table.”
True to his word, Mr. Trump skipped over many prominent members of his cabinet including Ms. Noem; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state — notable omissions amid his ICE crackdown in Minnesota and aggressive foreign policy abroad. The public portion of the gathering lasted about an hour and 20 minutes.
Almost as an afterthought, Mr. Trump addressed Vice President JD Vance: “JD, if you’d like to say something you can. He is, after all, the vice president of the United States.”
Mr. Vance replied, “It’s OK, sir, I’m here for the free coffee.”
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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