Trump at a December 2, 2025 cabinet meeting.

CNN anchor Audie Cornish played a devastating supercut of footage showing President Donald Trump mocking former president Joe Biden for looking drowsy at public events, followed by Tuesday’s clips of Trump himself appearing to nod off at an intense cabinet briefing covering potential war crimes by the Trump administration.

“So, the president said a lot during Tuesday’s cabinet meeting at the White House, but there were plenty of moments where he wasn't saying anything at all,” Cornish told a CNN panel of contributors. “In fact, while his secretaries went around the table, the 79-year-old president might have looked to some as though he may have dozed off a few times, eyes closed, head nodding down. … So why are we talking about this? Well, it's something that Trump himself made a central issue on the campaign trail a year ago.”

“He spends a day and then comes back,” Trump said last year at a campaign stop. “He falls asleep at every single event.”

“They don't target Joe on the beach as he sleeps. He sleeps. How do you fall asleep when cameras are raging?” Trump later said.

“I wish I could do that. Sleep with the cameras [going],” he claimed at yet another campaign event.

“The White House says what you're seeing here is the president listening attentively while running a marathon three-hour cabinet,” said Cornish, but Argument Founder Jerusalem Demsas said she wasn’t buying it.

“Obviously there's like a level of hypocrisy here about, you know, his own ability to remain really alert and awake, as in performing his duties,” said Demsas. “… But I do think there's a question here about why it stuck so much with Biden when it doesn't seem to stick with Trump. There's a there's a lot of frustration among Democrats about why isn't this sort of thing sticking with Trump when it's stuck with Biden?”

“I think the reason it doesn't stick is because Democrats don't have a messenger who is calling him ‘Sleepy Don,’ over and over and over again,” said another panelist. “The branding is not there and they are not as ruthless about making and pushing the criticism.”