Trump pulls an excuse for sleeping during meetings straight from a toddler’s playbook, and it’s arguably worse
At least this one’s believable.
On Jan. 29, 2026, Donald Trump finally addressed the growing pile of videos showing him with his eyes closed during White House meetings. His explanation was not medical. It wasn’t even defensive. He now says he’s just bored.
Several clips of “Dozy Don” have gone viral in the past few months. We’ve all seen Trump slumped back in his chair during briefings with his eyes closed while officials spoke around him. Such clips have raised questions about his attention, stamina, and fitness for office. Yet, the White House initially avoided addressing the footage directly.
But while speaking during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Trump waved off concerns that he had fallen asleep. Instead, the president has offered a justification that sounds like a child caught zoning out in class. Before ending the Thursday meeting, Trump told reporters that he will not “go through the whole table” of his officials this time.
He explained that it’s because the last press conference “lasted three hours.” And you would think that’s his job, but hey, our 79-year-old president is a toddler at heart. He can’t sit through such long meetings. But before getting up, he took a minute to address the widespread sleeping accusations:
The last time we had a press conference, it lasted for three hours. And some people said, ‘He closed his eyes.’ Look, it got pretty boring. I love these people, but these are a lot of people and 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.
Trump sleeping is a myth, everyone
In short, Trump closed his eyes because the meeting got “pretty boring.” And, in his own words, he “wanted to get the hell out of here.” Earlier this month, he told WSJ that he closes his eyes because it’s “very relaxing.” He also labeled pictures of him asleep as misleading, claiming,
“Sometimes they’ll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they’ll catch me with the blink.” (Via Newsweek)
Trump repeated that rhetoric again on Thursday, saying, “ I didn’t sleep, by the way.” He also went out of his way to reject the idea that fatigue played any role, telling reporters “I don’t sleep much.” So, the problem isn’t his alertness, it’s everyone else failing to keep him entertained. With this one line, he shifted the conversation away from age, health, or stamina, directly toward personality.
Trump wasn’t failing to stay awake, he was simply too important, too impatient to sit through what didn’t interest him. But boredom isn’t a defense when you’re the president of the United States. Cabinet meetings aren’t optional seminars. They’re where policy is debated, decisions are shaped, and crises are managed.
So, if his excuses for tuning out is “this isn’t entertaining me,” it raises a far more uncomfortable question than whether he nodded off. It asks whether he’s paying attention at all. The administration has tried to brush off the moment as media overreaction. They’ve leaned on Trump’s own insistence that he was fully aware of what was happening. But Trump himself undermined that defense.
Saying you closed your eyes because you were bored is an admission of disengagement. And that’s arguably worse.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
