'Exhausted' Trump now too sleepy to hammer 'sleepy Joe': report

For years President Donald Trump has joyfully plundered former president Joe Biden’s perceived lack of energy and measured, sluggish delivery for insults. But during one of his Oval Office afternoon televised announcements the Trump showed some semblance of mercy.

Irish Times correspondent Keith Duggan says it’s almost like the famously snoozy Trump was feeling a rare bout of empathy.

A reporter specifically asked Trump if he had noticed a cognitive decline in his predecessor when they met at the White House following Trump 2024 November victory, and Trump — in his typically crass way, of course — almost showed a hint of mercy.

“No, not really. He was the same guy I was watching for a long time. I mean you can go back 40 years, I watched him 40 years, 30 years ago. He was never the sharpest guy — you do know that. It wasn’t like he was sharp as a tack. But no, it was the same guy,” Trump said.

“But then we met also, as you know, we did the ritual and he was fine as far as I was concerned,” Trump added, again with an unfamiliar measure of compassion. “I dunno, something happened him during the debate. … I would say this: he did not have a good night. No, he spoke softly, very softly. I mentioned this to people – he spoke very softly, very low and as we talked we got along really well. And I thought he was fine.”

In the memoir of the former first lady, Jill Biden released this week, the author shared her account of her husband’s disastrous debate performance in Atlanta.

“Is this a stroke? Has he been drugged?” she recalled thinking as she watched. “To this day I wish I’d thought of asking for a blood test.”

Duggan notes that this month “will mark the two-year anniversary of Biden’s catastrophic public lapse. And it will also mark the 80th birthday of Trump, who has found his own mental and physical health under hawkish scrutiny of late.”

Trump appears to fall asleep so frequently at public meetings (that he himself officiates) that White House spokespeople are getting testy ay having to explain it away. Trump’s Rapid Response 47 social media account resorted to posting a flurry of screenshots of CNN reporters and commentators blinking, while trying to compare the images to Trump’s public snooze-fests.

Trump’s own secretary of state Marco Rubio tried to lie to Congress about Trump’s public naps, despite a U.S. senator showing him footage of Trump sleeping directly beside Rubio at a recent conference.

Duggan himself reports Trump’s gas appears to be running low. “It is surely significant that Trump’s puckish hints at running for a third term have fallen silent this year. Last May, Steve Bannon, his former White House strategist and Maga podcast host, repeatedly insisted Trump would run for a third term. But while Trump’s sharpness in his day-to-day combat with White House press corps members deemed hostile to the interests of the administration is frequently on display and his belligerence towards Democratic opponents still savage, the vigor and fire are not what they were even when he took office in January 2025.”

“It’s an exhausting job at any age and when it came to giving Sleepy Joe another verbal kicking on Thursday afternoon ... maybe he didn’t have the energy,” Duggan said.