#SleepyDon Keeps Nodding Off In Court

Trump: "People who sleep are lazy." (Apropos of Nothing: A lack of deep sleep for people over 60 can greatly increase the chances of developing dementia.)

The first courtroom sketch of a former president sleeping during the selection of a jury for his criminal trial is selected in U.S. history.

Maybe Mike Lindell should send him a pillow.

As jury selection began Monday in the first of Donald Trump’s four criminal trials, the big news of the day was that Dozo the Clown fell asleep at the defense table. Not once, but (at least) twice. #SleepyDon and #DonSnoreleone were trending on Xitter. Then, on Tuesday morning, Trump nodded off again.

How It Started

Shortly before the lunch break:

Maggie Haberman, April 15, 2024
Trump appears to be sleeping. His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack.

A few minutes later, Haberman posted an update: “Trump has apparently jolted back awake, noticing the notes his lawyer passed him several minutes ago.” He was asleep for “several minutes” and when he awoke, there was a small pile of “notes” (plural) in front of him. At the end of the day, Trump “glared” at her — “a pretty specific stare”, in her words — on his way out of the courtroom.

Later, Haberman elaborated: “He appeared to be asleep. Routinely his head would fall down. . . He didn’t pay attention to a note his lawyer passed him. His jaw kept falling on his chest and his mouth kept going slack. . . . [H]aving to sit there and be captive while we all report on him is going to be deeply uncomfortable for him because he is somebody who likes to control things.” (Haberman added Trump may also have fallen asleep during the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial.)

Several Other Reporters Also Noticed

Stewart Bishop (Law360) was in the courtroom: “It very much looks like Trump is dozing off right now.”

Erik Uebelacker (Courthouse News) watched from the overflow room: “Tough to see the screen in the overflow room, but I swear Trump is nodding off at the defense table. His chin just hit his chest, then his head shot back up.”

Frank Runyeon (Law360) saw Sleepy Don’s Day 2 (Tuesday) catnap:

Now: Trump’s head slowly dropped, his eyes closed. It jerked back upward. He adjusts himself. Then, his head droops again. He straightens up, leaning back. His head doops for a third time, he shakes his shoulders. Eyes closed still. His head drops. Finally, he pops his eyes open.

Brett Bachman and Jose Pagliery (The Daily Beast):

Just moments before his historic trial was set to begin Monday morning, Donald Trump posted that while working to clear his name, he would be “FIGHTING for the FREEDOM of 325 MILLION AMERICANS!” But just hours later, it appeared the only thing Trump was fighting was his own urge to fall asleep. . . .

The [lunch] recess didn’t appear to give Trump much of a pop, either—upon returning to the Manhattan courtroom, a Daily Beast reporter spotted Trump sitting with his arms crossed and his eyes closed after apparently dozing off a second time.

He sat, unmoving, for close to three minutes with his head leaning slightly to one side before jolting awake, again, and shifting around in an irritated manner.

Sara Down (Forbes):

Multiple other reporters made similar observations, including Reuters’ Jack Queen, who wrote in an email chain between reporters watching the trial, that Trump “was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded and his eyes very much appeared to be closed for several minutes at a time” just before 3 p.m. Queen said Trump appeared to be “dozing,” rather than “napping.”

Pilar Melendez (The Daily Beast) noted that falling asleep in public is “not a great look for someone who is constantly trying to project an image of vigor and energy” and she spoke with Dr. Chris Winter, a neurologist and sleep expert:

Is something keeping Donald Trump up at night? . . .

One sleep expert told The Daily Beast that he suspects Trump is not getting the right amount of shuteye and proper nutrition at this nerve-racking moment.

“Anytime we fall asleep in a stressful situation, those are indications that your brain is prioritizing it,” Dr. Chris Winter, neurologist and sleep expert, said of the court. . . . “[S]omeone who is able to fall asleep in jury selection is really someone who is at great risk and not an excellent sleeper. He has something wrong with the nature of his sleep. . . . He strikes me as someone who needs to prioritize sleep and nutrition, and he is not right now.”

Amanda Marcotte (Salon):

As a criminal defendant, he is required to sit in court every day. If he tries to hold campaign events at night or on the weekends, he’s going to be exhausted. He can sometimes barely speak clearly as it is. Add weariness and stress, and the confusion will likely rise even further. . . . [At the end of the day, after falling asleep twice] he spoke to reporters listlessly and with uncharacteristic brevity, while looking thoroughly wrung out.

Being in court every day is hard enough for normal people, but Trump is likely to make it much harder on himself with his bad personal habits, starting with his well-documented unwillingness to sleep like a normal person. While most of us were sound asleep at 5:30 on Monday morning, Trump was going full-tilt on Truth Social, with his usual mix of hysterical lies, poor grammar and random capitalization. He’s also frequently known to post social media tirades at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. . . .

He’s 77 years old and doesn’t take care of his health . . . Most people have a network of family and friends to rely on, but the people around Trump are mostly leeches and hangers-on, not folks who genuinely have compassion for him.

Rachel Maddow (MSNBC):

The wheels of justice grind slowly. I did not think they would grind so slowly that they would rock the defendant apparently to sleep at the defense table today.

Chris Hayes (MSNBC):

I feel like if you call your opponent “Sleepy Joe”, you have one job for the rest of the campaign . . . [Trump is] not a particularly emotionally regulated individual and doesn’t have the mastery of self-discipline . . . [He’s] got to sit and watch this day after day. I mean, this was day one. This is weeks and weeks of this. So at the most human level, I was just watching the reports today and thinking about just the sheer psychological torture.

Trump has bragged for decades about operating on only four hours of sleep every night. One Trump biographer told The Guardian that Trump “made a big deal of saying he never sleeps and that people who sleep are lazy”.

Paul Leigh suggested one solution:

David Mack (The Daily Beast) reported that one aspect of jury selection was the reading of numerous anti-Trump tweets that some prospective jurors had posted to social media at various times. They were read by the judge or played aloud and the possible bias of each one was discussed. (“Trump doesn’t look amused.”)

[It was a] punishment that seemed almost expressly designed to torment him . . .

[F]or more than an hour the notoriously thin-skinned Trump was forced to listen to jokes about his appearance, his likeability, his intelligence . . .

“Trump invites the Thai boys to the White House, and the boys request to return to their cave,” read a joke shared by another prospective juror, referring to the young soccer team rescued in Thailand in 2018.

“I’m dumb as fuck,” an AI-version of Trump said in one video shared by a prospective juror about two weeks ago. . . .

For a man whose ego is so sensitive that he has surrounded himself with a coterie of sycophantic aides and launched a new social media platform where his fans could boost his inane musings without any sense of reality creeping in, the entire process must have been excruciating for Trump. . . .

At one point, it apparently became too much and Trump couldn’t help himself, muttering something while one woman was being questioned about her posts —earning a swift scolding from Judge Juan Merchan.

“Your client was audibly uttering something,” Judge Merchan told Trump’s lawyers in a stern warning. “I won’t tolerate that. I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear.”

Trump could not keep quiet when a video was played of people dancing in the streets of New York after Trump lost the 2020 election. Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche called two screenshots from the video “extraordinarily hostile”. The woman was eventually added to the jury.

Both ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News did not mention anything about Trump’s inability to stay awake during the trial (damn that liberal media), according to Helena Hind of Media Matters. This fact is worth mentioning in light of Trump’s constant attacks on Joe Biden’s energy and focus. It’s a key part of his campaign strategy. Dan Froomkin (Press Watch) explains how the media is continually failing “to clearly explain the extent of Trump’s alleged crimes . . . to describe the breadth and the strength of the charges . . . election interference is universally seen as pretty heinous — much more so than simply paying hush money”.

Team Trump claimed #SleepyDon was wide awake and alert all day. That was a lie. TT stated the claim was made by people “who weren’t even in the courtroom”. That was a lie. Trump whined that the judge refused to allow him to attend his son’s high school graduation. That was a lie. In the evening, a begging-for-money email was sent out in which Trump bragged that he had stormed out of the courtroom in the afternoon. That was a lie.

One of Trump’s online tantrums was that the judge is not allowing him to “respond to people” which he wrote while responding to people. This one is an instant classic:

Trump was undoubtedly hoping for a strong show of support from some of those 325 MILLION AMERICANS who owe their freedom to Trump scowling and fidgeting between naps, but fewer than “50 randos” showed up on Monday morning. One woman from Queens rode the subway for 90 minutes to be there: “I thought more people would be here.”

Andrew Giuliani, the bellend that Michael Cohen famously said is so fuckin stupid he “makes Eric Trump look like a valedictorian of Harvard”, showed up on Monday looking for attention. On Tuesday, only one person was there — lol — and he said he voted for Obamna twice.

Both days, Trump arrived alone, with no family member (certainly not Melanie!) willing to support him in public.

Trump routinely calls every case against him “an assault on our country”, evidencing a common trait of dictators and authoritarians everywhere — conflating themselves with the country they control (or, in this case, hope to control). Trump says an attack on him is an attack on America. In other words, Trump IS America.

“I’m not sleeping in court for me, I’m sleeping in court for you.”