U.S. President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 2, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
The Bulwark reporter Joe Perticone reports even Republican senators are acknowledging President Donald Trump’s public naps at events.
“When President Donald Trump appeared to be dozing off during a cabinet meeting last week, it naturally raised the issue of whether the 79-year-old grandfather still has the basic physical ability to handle the rigors of the presidency. Even the New York Times noticed, and not just in the opinion pages,” wrote Perticone. “Trump’s eyes were closed for a cumulative six minutes over the course of the meeting — often as his cabinet members showered him with praise.”
Perticone acknowledged that older people are prone to napping, but since former President Joe Biden’s waning stamina became such a frequent Republican talking point, he quizzed lawmakers about their own nap-prone president.
Quite a few Republicans went immediately into denial, with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) claiming he’d heard nothing of Trump’s visible press naps.
“Republicans tend to refuse to comment on things they don’t want to admit they’ve seen, and when the thing in question is being put right under their nose, they sometimes simply run away,” Perticone said. “But as her GOP colleagues fled around her, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — who does sometimes criticize the president — did offer some insight."
“He doesn’t keep very good bedtime manners, does he?” Murkowski told Perticone, while blaming his drowsiness on “long meetings” and perhaps too much time online.
Perticone points out that Trump posted on Truth Social 158 times between 8 p.m. and midnight the night before his “soporific Cabinet session.” The Dec. 2 Cabinet meeting was not the first time Trump nodded off in front of millions of viewers. Trump shut his eyes in a November Oval Office event, and reporters recounted him nodding off in court last year.
Fox News’s medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel leapt to Trump’s defense, said Perticone, comparing Trump to legendary inventor Thomas Edison, you’re probably going to close your eyes, "whether you are 79 or 49" if you sleep badly.
If it were Biden, Perticone points out the comparison would’ve been “the Crypt-Keeper, not Edison.”
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