“His Head Keeps Dropping Down”: Donald Trump Fell Asleep During Day One of His Hush Money Trial

With a presidential campaign to run, a quartet of criminal cases to defend himself in, a Truth Social account to tend to, and a Mar-a-Lago set list that won’t play itself, Donald Trump has a lot of responsibilities on his plate. Meanwhile, he only sleeps four or five hours a night, by his own admission. So he was bound to nod off at an inopportune time at some point, and today, it was in a Manhattan courtroom during day one of his hush money trial.

“Trump appears to be sleeping,” the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported this afternoon. “His head keeps dropping down, and his mouth goes slack.” Later, speaking to CNN, she told Jake Tapper, “He appeared to be asleep. And routinely his head would fall down.… He didn’t pay attention to a note his lawyer Todd Blanche passed him.”

Cameras, unfortunately, are not allowed in the courtroom, so we don’t have footage of all of this. But you don’t just have to take Haberman’s word for it. Erik Uebelacker, a reporter for Courthouse News, saw the same thing:

As did Law360’s Stewart Bishop:

While Trump’s supporters will presumably see his dozing as a sign of masculinity or something (“Only real men fall asleep during their hush money trials!”), as New York magazine points out, it’s a bad look not just because of the obvious but for one very Trump-specific reason:

“Sleepy Joe” was always a low-energy Trump nickname. Donald Trump’s derisive name for Joe Biden never had the zing of “Crooked Hillary” or “Liddle Marco,” and it was too similar to other Trump nicknames like “Sleepin’ Bob” Casey and “Sleepy Eyes” Chuck Todd. Now there’s a new problem with it that no one anticipated: It’s easy to turn it back on “Sleepy Don” when he nods off during a criminal trial over hush money payments he allegedly made to cover up an affair with a porn star.

The good news is that he’ll have lots of down time over the next few weeks to come up with another nickname for the president.