President Donald Trump has taken a kicking live on TV.
The 79-year-old appeared to be taking a snooze in the Oval Office on Monday during a presentation aimed at supporting moms and championing maternal health.
Trump’s goons were quick to conjure up an astonishing defense of the 79-year-old’s nap, pointing the Daily Beast to a post on X responding to a Reuters photo saying, “He was blinking, you absolute moron.”
“That’s a very long blink!” Joe Scarborough said on Tuesday’s episode of Morning Joe.
Co-pannelist Jonathan Lemire agreed, saying, “That’s the longest blink I’ve ever seen.”
The eye closure took place with Trump surrounded by Cabinet members, as well as Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Dr. Mehmet Oz and Alabama Sen. Katie Britt.
“Not a lot of rights and access to healthcare to talk about, so maybe he fell asleep?” joked Scarborough’s co-host and wife, Mika Brzezinski.
“You know, the thing is, everybody’s entitled to sleep. And, you know, I like sleeping, you know, and sometimes you close your eyes, you’re in, you know, you get tired, but you remember Sleepy Joe?” added former GOP congressman Scarborough, 63.
“Remember Joe Biden goes to a memorial service in Hawaii, and he closes his eyes for about three seconds, and a lot of people thought it was because he was sad at the tragedy there, and Trump’s people just went absolutely crazy?” he said. “‘Sleepy Joe, Sleepy Joe.’”
Trump’s tiredness could be explained by his penchant for late-night social media posting.
A Daily Beast analysis found that there were only five days in April when he could have gotten a full night’s sleep, posting 189 times between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. that month.
Scarborough continued, “This isn’t the first time he’s appeared to be taking a catnap in the Oval Office. So again, you know [Ronald] Reagan did it. People do it. OK, that’s fine, but you can’t just go on and on and on about Sleepy Joe, Sleepy Joe, Sleepy Joe, and then sleep even more in the White House than your predecessor did.”
Morning Joe then played back a clip from the Fragrant podcast with Andrew Schulz, where Trump said in 2014, “You’ll never see me sleeping in front of cameras.”
It comes after the White House finally revealed when Trump would be taking a trip to Walter Reed Medical Center for his annual checkup. It was supposed to be done a year from April 11, 2025, but it is now scheduled for May 26, more than a month late.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
