{"id":81,"date":"2026-05-27T10:12:03","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=81"},"modified":"2026-05-27T10:12:03","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:12:03","slug":"trumps-anti-nap-manifesto-comes-back-to-haunt-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=81","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s anti-nap manifesto comes back to haunt him"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I\u2019ll be completely honest with you: I didn\u2019t intend to write about President Donald Trump\u2019s age again quite so soon. It was only last week that he was railing against The New York Times for daring to report that our 79-year-old president is slowing down. But his visible lethargy at his televised Cabinet meeting this week isn\u2019t helping him change the topic.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s tariff relief money to farmers is duct tape on a broken pipe<\/a><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, roughly 20 minutes into his opening ramble, Trump directly addressed the assembled reporters, taking them to task for their focus on his age. \u201cYou people are crazy,\u201d he said, sitting in his leather chair, surrounded by his chief sycophants. \u201cI\u2019ll let you know when there\u2019s something wrong. There will be someday. That\u2019s going to happen to all of us. But right now, I think I\u2019m sharper than I was 25 years ago. But who the hell knows.\u201d The president then proceeded to brag \u2014 again \u2014 about having gotten \u201call A\u2019s\u201d on his physical and having \u201caced\u201d a cognitive test, relishing every detail as if he\u2019d never told these stories before.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s consider Trump\u2019s point about being sharper now than he was 25 years ago, a challenge that doesn\u2019t lend itself to positive comparisons. An interview with St. Louis NBC News affiliate KSDK from 2000, when Trump was considering a run for president on the Reform Party ticket, is a helpful reference point. Even then, Trump was lamenting that America is being ripped off by other countries, fretting about the threat of nuclear weapons and making bombastic promises to fix a broken health care system \u2014 themes that are still core for him today.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s voice in the 2000 interview has the same pattering rhythm we\u2019ve all grown overly familiar with. But today, the roughly five-minute interview is remarkable for how Trump stays on topic. Every answer keeps to the question he was originally asked. He repeats himself for emphasis only rarely \u2014 and without diving off into a full tangent. (It\u2019s also worth marveling that even so brief an interview would be a struggle for Trump\u2019s current attention span.)<\/p>\n

Fifteen years later, when Trump had made the leap into politics and was running for president, he began holding rallies and making the longer speeches that became his signature style. Specifically, my colleague Ryan Teague Beckwith reminded me of a deep irony in the way Trump sold himself to the public during his first presidential run and how he attacked his rivals. While seeking the GOP nomination, he called Florida Gov. Jeb Bush \u201clow energy.\u201d The criticism stuck and helped knock Bush out of the primary race.<\/p>\n

Trump then deployed the same attack line against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During a July 2016 campaign rally, soon after officially becoming the Republican nominee, Trump slammed Clinton as being \u201clow energy.\u201d (Yes, the same line he would later recycle against Joe Biden in the 2020 and 2024 campaigns.)<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019ll go home, she\u2019ll take a nap for four or five hours, and she\u2019ll come back,\u201d Trump crowed to a cheering crowd. \u201cNo naps for Trump, no naps. I don\u2019t take naps. We don\u2019t have time.\u201d This was far from a one-off dig at Clinton; for months, Trump had argued that she \u201clacked the strength or stamina\u201d to be president. \u201cWe need a president who can go 24 hours a day, seven days a week \u2014 she can\u2019t do it,\u201d he said in a December 2015 Fox News interview.<\/p>\n

One striking thing you can see today watching video of Trump\u2019s anti-nap manifesto is the comparative quickness<\/em> of not just his cadence but also his gestures. His motions were frenetic, at times jerky. There was none of that energy at Tuesday\u2019s Cabinet meeting, where he was filmed closing his eyes as Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised his negotiating prowess in trying to end the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Read more Indiana Republicans refused to be put in a gerrymandered box<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve got a million things we could be focused on, but he\u2019s the only leader in the world who can help end it,\u201d Rubio said, gesturing to a man who seemed lethargic, at best. The president nodded slightly when his chief diplomat addressed him directly to note the number of people who are killed each week in the fighting. The sight of a potentially dozing dictator only marginally present at a public meeting contrasted sharply with the image Rubio was attempting to paint.<\/p>\n

When a New York Times reporter inquired about Trump\u2019s apparent fatigue, the White House gave this absurdly indignant reply:<\/p>\n

\n

Asked whether Mr. Trump fell asleep, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that the president was \u2018listening attentively and running the entire\u2019 meeting.<\/p>\n

She cited Mr. Trump\u2019s response during a question and answer segment at the end of the meeting, when he delivered a tirade against Somali immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u2018This epic moment put an exclamation point on President Trump\u2019s ninth cabinet meeting of his second term \u2014 all of which have been entirely open to the press for the whole world to see,\u2019 Ms. Leavitt said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That pushback takes Leavitt\u2019s shamelessness to new heights. Not only does she ask people to ignore what we\u2019ve seen with our own eyes, but she points to the racist and dehumanizing rhetoric Trump spewed on Tuesday as proof that he was paying attention. Expecting people to ignore the fact that the president is aging is inane. And even if Trump truly is in good shape for someone his age, the average life expectancy for American men is 75.8 years. The president might be above average \u2014\u00a0but we shouldn\u2019t forget where the bar is.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s past criticism of naps has unintended irony as we watch him nod off in front of cameras. There\u2019s nothing shameful about needing a nap every so often, or being bored enough during a meeting to close your eyes for a bit. Trump was posting up a storm on Truth Social until well after midnight the night before; it\u2019s human to be tired after being up late. But there\u2019s no sense in denying the obvious, either. Staying awake through an 11 a.m. meeting should not be a struggle for the nation\u2019s leader, nap or no nap.<\/p>\n

Read more Meet the MAGA world pastor who is trying to convert Trump on Ukraine<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 79-year-old president, who has been accused of nodding off in recent meetings, railed against the idea of a president needing naps during his 2016 presidential run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump\u2019s anti-nap manifesto comes back to haunt him - Long Distance Movers USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=81\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump\u2019s anti-nap manifesto comes back to haunt him - 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