'Time is a flexible concept': Trump’s sleep habits are getting even 'stranger'

While it’s become widely known that President Donald Trump tends to keep unusual hours, a new book has revealed the extent of his “bizarre” sleep habits and that they keep getting “stranger.”

As the Daily Beast explains, “Trump, 80, has gained a reputation for sleeping less and less in his golden years. He has also developed a penchant for going on Truth Social posting sprees after midnight, as well as being caught on camera seeming to nod off during important White House meetings. His ability to operate as the most powerful person on Earth with minimal shut-eye has been hailed as a superpower by fawning members of his administration.”

Now the new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by White House correspondents Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, is raising eyebrows by revealing just how erratic Trump’s sleep patterns can be.

For example, the book claims that in a White House lead by Trump, “time is a flexible concept,” and that his inconsistent sleep drives the “rhythms and structures and operations of the place.” This is especially true of his second term. During his first administration, Trump typically arrived in the Oval Office by 11 am. In term two, however, his schedule has become less predictable as he’s slept with growing inconsistency.

“Some mornings Trump would be up early making phone calls and posting on social media while watching TV,” says the book. “But occasionally, aides couldn’t reach him during the hours between eight and ten, when they soon came to realize meant he had stayed up all night, on the phone or watching television or both, only to finally catch some sleep around four or five in the morning.”

According to the book, “one late morning,” no one had heard from the president and his staff was unable to contact him: “an aide checked on the President only to find that he was still asleep in the residence.”

“He had never been a big sleeper, but now it seemed to his staff that he was sleeping even less, keeping stranger hours than he had in his first term,” the book claims, revealing not only that Trump has “remained a night owl,” but that he and Melania sleep in separate rooms.

What’s more, his aides have privately begun to admit that Trump is “beginning to seem old” during his second term as “those who spent time with him could see the signs — the moments of fatigue, the cupped hand behind the ear.” As the book explains, “That he had aged since he last lived in the White House was obvious. There were the repeated bouts of drowsiness during mid-afternoon public events. And there were the near-constant bruises on his hands, which his aides first attributed to marks from frequent handshaking. Trump, who usually tried to conceal the bruising with makeup, later said they were caused primarily by the unusually large aspirin regimen he took as a blood thinner.”

Amidst all the talk of Trump’s strange sleeping habits, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has attempted to deny claims that the president appeared to fall asleep during Cabinet meetings. As Rubio testified to Congress, under oath, “That’s false. That’s false. I’ve never seen him fall asleep. On the contrary, the guy doesn’t sleep, which is a big problem, because he calls me at 2 in the morning, he calls me at 5 in the morning, and you know, I like to sleep a little bit — maybe not 12 hours — but at least six… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Democrat Congressman Ted Lieu then played a video that showed Trump falling asleep mid-meeting, noting, “You are literally talking about issues of war and peace, and Donald Trump is sleeping right next to you.”

“This is a joke,” Rubio responded.