A focus group of swing voters suggests Republicans should be getting worried about President Donald Trump’s habit of falling asleep during important White House meetings.
Axios brought together a group of 14 voters in North Carolina who cast ballots for President Joe Biden in 2020 before crossing the aisle to vote for Trump in 2024.
While the outlet cautioned that the focus group doesn’t have the statistical significance of a poll, it does offer a window into how some voters—in this case, 11 self-described independents, one Republican, and two Democrats—are thinking.
Eleven of the 14 voters said they had heard that Trump, 79, has trouble staying awake in meetings.
The president has been caught snoozing at official events since at least the spring, as reported by the Daily Beast, and lately the dozing has become more frequent.
The aging Trump couldn’t keep his eyes open during a summit in Saudi Arabia in May and fell asleep during a press conference on drug prices in November.
He nodded off during his own Cabinet meeting on Dec. 3 and then again less than a week later, when he jolted awake during a roundtable event at the White House on Monday.
The inopportune catnaps have earned Trump, who called his predecessor Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe,” the nickname “Dozy Don” from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office.
The Axios focus group was asked to respond to a montage of video footage showing Trump appearing to nod off, and the responses did not bode well for the White House.
One independent thought Trump was downplaying or even hiding health issues, just as she thought Biden’s team had done, while another said that Trump, also like Biden, was just “too old” for the job.
“I don’t know if it’s any huge medical issue. I mean, you get to be 80—this is not—CEOs aren’t 80 for most companies,” the second independent said.
“It’s not that him falling asleep is out of the ordinary given his age. But it is the most important job you could have in the country, so you probably shouldn’t be falling asleep,” agreed a third independent.
The Republican of the group blamed the situation on the president’s poor sleep habits.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
“Well, he also spends half the night tweeting,” he said, in reference to the president’s frequent habit of staying up past midnight while he goes on social media rampages.
Publicly, the president’s team has tried to spin his lack of sleep as a good thing, suggesting it shows the “tireless” Trump is full of stamina and working non-stop.
But privately, his aides are in a constant state of panic about their boss dozing off on camera, because he blows up at them afterward, author Michael Wolff revealed during the latest episode of the Daily Beast’s podcast Inside Trump’s Head.
“He gets angry,” Wolff told his co-host Joanna Coles. “He essentially blames the people around him for the fact that he fell asleep.”
“You’re on camera, so you can’t jostle him... So nobody knows what to do,” he added, saying the president was “in denial.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded with a statement praising the president’s “relentless work ethic” and “unmatched energy,” and calling Wolff’s statements a “fake and desperate narrative.”
“As the President’s physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, has made clear time and again— and as the American people see with their own eyes every single day—President Trump remains in excellent overall health.”
