NEWSWEEK
President Joe Biden‘s reelection campaign is mocking former President Donald Trump as “Sleepy Don” following reports that he fell asleep at multiple points during his New York criminal hush-money trial this week.
Trump, who is expected to face Biden in a rematch in November as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, was observed by reporters and others in the courtroom purportedly falling asleep during jury selection this week. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records tied to hush money paid to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.
The 77-year-old Trump has repeatedly referred to Biden as “Sleepy Joe” in the past and continues to frequently suggest that the 81-year-old president is too tired or “cognitively impaired” to serve in the Oval Office. Trump opponents have made similar claims about the ex-president.
The former president’s purported courtroom naps this week—multiple reporters and courtroom observers said they observed him dozing off on all but one of the first four days of the trial—have given the Biden campaign ammunition to turn the tables on Trump.
In a press release titled “Verdict’s In: Sleepy Don Has a Nightmare Week,” the Biden campaign on Friday touted the president’s recent campaigning in Pennsylvania and his endorsement by most members of the Kennedy family before mocking the former president for using his trial to get “some shut-eye.”
Biden-Harris 2024 campaign spokesperson James Singer added in a statement included in the release: “Donald Trump and his campaign’s self-inflicted wounds are not paying off,” arguing that the Trump campaign’s “strategy of not campaigning, wasting money, acting like small time thugs, and pushing their extreme agenda is driving away voters.”
“At the Biden campaign, our eyes are wide awake: Voters want an economy that works for them—not billionaires, their rights protected instead of ripped away, and a president focused on solving their problems instead of being consumed by their own,” Singer continued.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump campaign via email on Friday night.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told The Washington Post that reports of the former president sleeping in court were “fake news from a reporter who wasn’t even in the courtroom,” while highlighting “Biden falling asleep constantly at meetings, and tripping and busting his a** while falling down numerous times.”
The reporter to which Cheung was apparently referring, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, told the Post that she was viewing the trial from “the overflow room and, along with other reporters, could see his entire face on a very large monitor through closed-circuit camera,” providing a view “unlike the Trump aides sitting rows behind him in the courtroom.”
The Biden-Harris campaign also shared a screenshot of Haberman reporting on the Times liveblog that “Trump appears to have fallen asleep in court again” on Friday in a post to X, formerly Twitter.
“A feeble and tired Donald Trump once again falls asleep in court,” the campaign commented while sharing the image.
Trump is expected back in court on Monday, when opening arguments in the hush-money trial are slated to begin with the prosecution’s case against the ex-president.
