One child slept through President Donald Trump’s Oval Office sales pitch.
A group of young tots brought into the Oval Office Monday to promote President Donald Trump’s investment accounts for children ended up sitting cross-legged on the floor for more than an hour of presidential riffing.
At least one fell asleep somewhere between Trump’s musings on the new accounts and a tangent about why Folarin Balogun should never have received a red card in the first place.
After ringing the bell to signal the opening of the stock exchange on the first day of Trump Accounts being live to the market, Trump spoke uninterrupted for around 16 minutes, the chatter of the children slowly dying down somewhere off camera.
“People have been trying to do this for 30 years,” he said of the new accounts, before wandering off topic.
Trump, 80, then opened it up to the many other adults gathered behind him who all riffed on the new accounts for another 15 minutes, before Trump returned to the mic.
The children who were still awake looked incredibly bored.
Trump took questions in his signature scattershot style for another 50-odd minutes.
“Who would have thought drones would become such a factor, they’re killing machines, it’s amazing, you hide behind a tree and it goes and gets you,” he said, as part of an answer to a question about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As he continued to take questions, the children remained completely silent.
“I’m like a cheerleader for geniuses. I love high IQ people,” Trump said at one point, after a question about Elon Musk.
Finally, after detouring through nuclear power, his inauguration crowd, Iran’s “nuclear dust,” cryptocurrency and the White House helipad he’s building, Trump wrapped things up and the children were allowed to leave.
The Trump Accounts provide a $1,000 government-funded investment account for children born between 2025 and 2028—meaning none of the kids sitting in the Oval Office qualified for the flagship program they were there to promote.
Instead, they are eligible under a separate initiative funded by private donors. Tech billionaire Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, are contributing more than $6 billion to provide $250 accounts for children under 10 who were born before 2025 and live in ZIP codes where the median family income is below $150,000.
