It’s the question Donald Trump’s aides and allies have been increasingly asking: how do you keep the 80-year-old president from falling asleep during public events?
The answer, as it turns out, is not a woman with a secret button attached to her stomach.
Former Trump White House staffer Jayme Leagh Franklin went viral this week after appearing behind Trump during an Oval Office event where he appeared to be dozing off.
Franklin, who now oversees MAGA lifestyle publication The Conservateur, was standing behind Trump and alongside Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. as they announced a controversial overhaul of childhood vaccines on Monday.
But as the president’s eyes kept closing, Franklin was repeatedly nodding and had a hand resting on her stomach. That was apparently all the internet needed.
Conspiracy theories and jokes quickly took off that the 26-year-old was some kind of human remote control—dubbed “The Zapper”—whose mysterious belly button could supposedly jolt the president awake when his eyelids began to droop.
“Claims she has a button fitted on her belly, and when she gets the nod that he’s asleep, she moves her hand and presses a button that wakes him,” said one satirical post featuring footage of Franklin and the president slumped over in his chair struggling to stay awake.
“They’re calling her The Zapper. No idea if it’s true, but it *appears* to line up.”
Franklin eventually offered a far less sinister explanation.
“I’m just pregnant, you weirdos,” she wrote on X, alongside laughing and crying emojis.
Franklin worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign as a coalitions coordinator, becoming a director of correspondence in the final months of the first Trump White House.
She says she was invited by Kennedy to attend Monday’s event, where the president signed an executive order calling for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to be spaced out for children, while he pushed contentious claims about their links to autism.
“Bad things happen in many cases,” Trump insisted without evidence.
But while Franklin is not a human zapper, Trump, on the other hand, is a human whose health has increasingly come under scrutiny.
After years of mocking his predecessor Joe Biden’s mental and physical health, the president now faces many questions about his own ailments, including frequent bruises on his hands, swollen ankles and whether or not he is dozing off on the job.
Indeed, at a Capitol Hill hearing in June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was confronted with the harsh reality of footage showing America’s oldest president seemingly sleeping during a cabinet meeting just as Rubio was singing his praises over Iran.
“You are literally talking about issues of war and peace, and Donald Trump is sleeping right next to you,” said Democrat Congressman Ted Lieu, as he played a video of the incident during the hearing.
“Now, if Donald Trump cannot stay awake at these important meetings where the cameras are rolling, imagine what he’s like when the cameras are not there.”
The White House, meanwhile, insists Trump is sharp and fit for his age, while the president himself has an explanation for his droopy eyes.
“Sometimes they’ll take a picture of me blinking,” he insisted in January when asked about an episode in which he appeared to be sleeping. “They’ll catch me with the blink.”
