He may be the President of the United States, but Donald Trump seems to have earned a new nickname after he appeared to fall asleep during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.
The 79-year-old seemed to nod off during the lengthy session, his eyes visibly drooping after he encouraged every member of his Cabinet to boast about their year-one accomplishments.
The meeting, which lasted 2 hours and 17 minutes, covered a wide range of topics: Trump’s hardened stance on stopping drugs being trafficked into the country, concerns about his health, and an unhinged rant targeting Somali migrants.
However, social media users couldn’t help focusing on Trump’s waning attention—and the moment he appeared to nod off—quickly dubbing him both “Dozy Don” and “Commander in Sleep.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back, insisting that Trump was as energetic as ever.
“President Trump was listening attentively and running the entire three-hour marathon Cabinet meeting,” she said in a statement to the Daily Mail.
This marks the third time in recent weeks that the President has been accused of falling asleep during meetings.
Before being spotted resting his eyes, Trump once again lashed out at journalists for their lines of questioning, saying: “You always find something new, like, ‘Is he in good health?’” He then sarcastically added, “‘Biden was great.’”
“I sit here and do four news conferences a day. I ask questions from very intelligent lunatics. You people. I give the right answers. There’s never a scandal. There’s never a problem. I give you answers and solve your little problems,” Trump continued.
“You go back, and you can’t find anything, but you do, you do stories about Biden was in wonderful health,” he added. “‘The guy couldn’t do a news conference for eight months.’”
“If I go one day—I had one day where I didn’t do a news conference—‘There’s something wrong with the President,’” he said.
In recent weeks, Trump’s health has come under heightened scrutiny. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz urged him to release his MRI results after a string of incoherent rambles on social media.
Trump complied, and on Monday the White House announced that he had a “perfectly normal” set of results with no issues of concern.
“You people are crazy,” Trump told reporters.
“I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong. There will be some day, that’s going to happen to all of us. But right now, I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago, but who the hell knows.”
Trump’s strong defense of his health came at the start of the meeting, but just over 90 minutes later, his attention appeared to fade. The President closed his eyes while other Cabinet members spoke.
This quickly inspired social media users to brand him the “Commander in Sleep.”
One journalist claimed the President looked “unconscious” during Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s remarks toward the end of the meeting.
Leavitt pushed back again, pointing instead to the “amazing final answer” Trump delivered during his exchange with reporters—a response that included a scathing attack on Somali migrants.
Targeting Representative Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia, Trump said: “She’s garbage, her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work. These aren’t people that say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’ These are people that do nothing but complain.”
Doubling down, he declared that these immigrants “come from hell.”
“And they complain and do nothing but b***h,” the President added. “We don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”