On Monday, April 15, the first day of the first criminal trial of a former president in American history, the defendant fell asleep. Donald Trump “appeared to nod off a few times, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest,” Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reported.
It happened again the next day. That Friday, Trump dozed off several times. “His eyes were closed for extended periods and his head dropped down twice,” Haberman noted.
He was no more alert the following Monday. “Trump is struggling to stay awake. His eyes were closed for a short period. He was jolted awake when Todd Blanche, his lawyer, nudged him while sliding a note in front of him,” Susanne Craig reported in the Times.
On Tuesday, April 30, Trump may or may not have been awake; he was sitting with “eyes closed, leaning back in his seat.”
Wednesday—yesterday—was a day off for the trial. Trump used the opportunity to post on Truth Social, “Where’s SLEEPY JOE? He’s SLEEPING, that’s where!!!”
Trump’s bouts of drowsiness occupy a strange place in the political news. They began as an object of amusement, good fodder for comedians of the late-night, social-media, and podcast varieties. (“Don Snoreleone” was one memorable coinage; others fittingly compared him to Rip Van Winkle, a lethargic New Yorker who’s stuck in the past and waking up to an unpleasant new reality.) Now, like many of Trump’s strangest behaviors, his impromptu naps threaten to become normal, as though catnapping through a lurid trial is typical. But they shouldn’t be mere comic fodder, nor accepted as normal: They are a worrisome sign about a leading presidential candidate. If Trump can’t manage to stay awake during a trial when his very freedom is on the line, what are the chances that he will be able to focus on the intricacies of a spiraling regional war, a trade policy, or any new crisis that might face him if he returns to the White House?
Trump seems to get that, and appears to be actually a bit embarrassed—unusual for a man who, when caught in what might otherwise be a shameful situation, more commonly acts proud. In this case, though, Trump isn’t insisting that he’s been taking “perfect” naps. Instead, he’s posting about President Joe Biden being the sleepy one. His aides have mostly tried to avoid the topic. Alina Habba, one of Trump’s many lawyers, insisted that he wasn’t sleeping, but added, “He’s probably brutally bored.” This excuse might have been more persuasive if it was just the first day—Mondays are hard on everyone, especially guys with orange hair, and jury selection can be mind-numbing. It’s harder to accept as the sleeping persists while the trial gets into juicy details. But, luckily for Trump, because the trial is not televised, there’s no video. That means Trump avoids clips of him snoozing spreading around, and the reports that do exist come from mainstream journalists whom Trump’s fans aren’t reading and wouldn’t trust anyway.
Presumably, if Trump could stop dozing off, he would do so. Can he really not control his urge to sleep? That would be especially notable given that Trump has in the past boasted about not needing much rest, as the journalist Scott Nover points out in Slate. “I’m not a big sleeper, I like three hours, four hours, I toss, I turn, I beep-de-beep, I want to find out what’s going on,” Trump said in 2015. During his term in the White House, he would often tweet at all hours of the night, though the content of those messages frequently suggested that he might have been better off if he’d logged off and dropped off. The Wall Street Journal suggests that without access to Diet Coke—drinks are banned in the courtroom—he is caffeine-deprived, and that guzzling a couple of cans during breaks runs another risk, because bathroom breaks are controlled by the judge.
Trump’s pattern of projection is by now well understood. Throughout this campaign, he and his allies have attacked Joe Biden as a doddering old man who no longer has the energy for the office. Biden doesn’t show the signs of mental decline that Trump suggests, but he is demonstrably more elderly than he was in 2020. Each time Trump falls asleep in court, however, it makes his criticism of Biden’s age seem like another case of projection. Trump’s performance as president during his first term showed that he was not up to the job. His snoozing in court raises the question of whether he can stay up for it, either.