Critic flattens White House’s 'weirdly aggressive' defense of Trump’s desk naps

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a maternal health event in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 11, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Intelligencer Senior Editor Margaret Hartmann says the White House is getting increasingly touchy about President Donald Trump’s growing problem with nodding off in front of millions of viewers.

“We’ve all been there: You’re in some dull meeting and you’re fighting to keep your eyes open because you stayed up too late attacking your enemies on Truth Social and posting weird AI slop about how you’re the greatest president of all time,” said Hartmann, referring to Trump’s recent all-night Truth Social rage-slam.

“[W]e can all identify with these videos of Donald Trump struggling to stay awake during a meeting yesterday on maternal health,” said Hartmann. “Unfortunately for Trump, he can’t just admit that he’s a nearly 80-year-old man who gets drowsy sometimes because (a) he’s president of the United States and (b) he won reelection, in part, by repeatedly attacking ‘Sleepy Joe’ Biden for his decrepitude.’”

And because of this inability to admit the obvious, Team Trump must devise other explanations for “why the president regularly closes his eyes for long periods of time in public.”

“Sometimes they ... [marvel] about how Trump is an unstoppable ball of energy, despite evidence to the contrary. The president himself has insisted that he never nods off in public. Two years ago, he said that sometimes he just likes to ‘listen intensely’ and rest his ‘beautiful blue eyes,’” reports Hartmann.

Only now, the White is tempering its outlandish claims with a fair bit of hostility.

“He was blinking, you absolute moron,” White House’s rapid-response team snapped on X.

“This response was weirdly aggressive,” said Hartmann, pointing out that Reuters national security correspondent Idrees Ali didn’t even claim Trump was sleeping on the job. He merely shared an un-doctored photo what looked like Trump doing the obvious thing that senior citizens sometimes do at public engagements.

And in any case, Trump’s eyes were “often fully closed or downcast” when others were speaking, including one moment, 22 minutes into the video, where Trump shut his eyes 18 seconds.

An 18-second “blink” really strains credulity, said Hartmann.

“Though, isn’t sleeping, in a way, just a regular hourslong blink?” Hartmann added.

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