'Got me in a blink': Trump tells Cabinet he’s not sleeping at their 'boring' meetings
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 29, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
President Donald Trump once again claimed that he never fell asleep during meetings where he was photographed leaning back in his hair with his eyes closed.
During an interview about his health with Ben Terris, Trump's team insisted that when he appears to be asleep, he's actually taking notes on his lap.
Trump and his team have tried to dismiss photos of him with his eyes closed as evidence of his intense concentration. Critics use such photos when questioning his health.
“It’s not dozing. Sometimes, if he’s thinking about something — and I made that mistake at first too — he adopts a pose. He leans back or leans forward a little bit, and he either closes his eyes or looks down," press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in the New York Magazine interview.
"So, with that, we are going to ask a couple of people to say a few words," Trump said during the Cabinet meeting Thursday. "We're not going to go through the whole table because the last time we had a press conference, it lasted for three hours and some people said, 'he closed his eyes.'"
"Look," Trump continued, "it got pretty boring. I love these people. I love these people. But these are a lot of people. It was a little bit on the boring side, but I didn't sleep. I just closed them because I wanted to get the hell out of here. Some of them. I didn't sleep, by the way. I don't — I don't sleep much, let me tell you."
"But, you know, it's funny, some of them got me in a blink. You know, when you go," Trump said before blinking his eyes. "Like you go," he said blinking many times. "And they took me as — at the closed segment of my cycle."
Trump added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others would wake him up if he were sleeping.
"They'd be knocking me.Come on, you gotta wake up,boss," Trump said.