Speaker Mike Johnson has taken Trump sycophancy to new heights with an unbelievable claim about how much time the 79-year-old president spends working.
When asked by Fox Business host Stuart Varney on Friday if he personally works 18-hour days, Johnson, 53, replied, “More! And I have to, because President Trump works 21 hours a day.”
Johnson’s bizarre claim comes as Trump is reportedly enraged over reports that his health and competency are in decline.
Sources close to the president, including one adviser, told Zeteo on Thursday that Trump is “sensitive to being compared to Sleepy Joe,” a nickname he bestowed on former President Joe Biden. The nickname might especially sting after Trump was photographed appearing to doze off during a string of recent meetings.
On Nov. 6, a Getty Images photographer captured the president leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed during a meeting in the Oval Office intended to announce lowering the cost of GLP-1 drugs. Trump told reporters later that month that he is “not a sleeper.”
Then, this week, photographers from Getty and the AFP snapped several shots of the president appearing to gradually fall asleep during a Cabinet meeting.
The president has drastically reduced his schedule in his second term. A recent New York Times investigation revealed that Trump, on average, starts his workdays between 11 a.m. and noon, and often attends his final event of the day in the early evening.
The report also found that Trump’s official appearances have dropped by nearly 40 percent compared to his first term. While the president hosted 1,688 events in the first ten months of his first term, he hosted just 1,029 between January and November of 2025.
The president is also known for taking frequent breaks from work, often traveling to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Per his public schedule, at least 79 days of Trump’s second term have included several hours marked off to play golf.
Despite mounting evidence suggesting the president is slowing down, the White House insists his health is better than ever.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Zeteo that Trump is in “excellent health,” and praised his “relentless work ethic, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s inner circle has regularly made similar claims as Johnson about the president’s allegedly nonexistent sleep schedule.
In November, Vice President JD Vance told Sean Hannity the president often completes 20-hour trips without sleeping at all. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Attorney General Pam Bondi have both parroted the same story.
“None of us can keep up with him, we always joke,” Bondi said on The Katie Miller Show in September. “I don’t know how he does it. I mean, none of us know when he sleeps. He’s working all the time, and it’s just constant for him.”
