‘Urgent meeting with the back of his eyelids’: Nicolle on Trump DOZING OFF in public appearances

[0:00] Hi, everyone. Happy Friday. It's four o'clock in New York. For the sake of our 250-year experiment [0:06] in democracy and the health and safety of our people, might it be high time to start [0:12] managing Donald Trump's green time? Before we try to answer that question, you should know this. [0:19] Donald Trump appeared to have another urgent meeting yesterday with the back of his eyelids. [0:24] It took place during an event on health care affordability in the Oval Office [0:29] because who needs a white noise machine, or melatonin for that matter, when you've got [0:34] important policy matters to help you drift off to la-la land? For anyone else, the solution to such [0:41] frequent occasions of falling asleep in public might be a better, more sound night's sleep, [0:48] even in the midst of a war that he started, but no. Hours later, between the hours of midnight and [0:54] 2.45 a.m., Donald Trump posted on social media 18 times by our count, picking back up again just [1:01] after 7.30 a.m. And none of those posts were really anything pressing. None of them were things that [1:07] couldn't wait till a morning tirade. In the two-minute span encompassing 12.27 a.m. and 12.28 a.m. [1:16] Eastern, for instance, Donald Trump posted four times on the topics of treason charges for former [1:22] President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 45 minutes later at 1.13 a.m., [1:29] he posted this, quote, the 2020 presidential election should be permanently wiped from the [1:34] books and be of no further force or effect. An hour and a half later at 2.43 a.m., either still awake [1:44] or awake again, he shared a fawning quote from legendary actor Clint Eastwood. Although we checked [1:51] on that quote from that legendary actor and it appears the quote was actually from a New Hampshire [1:57] state representative from the year 2019. So much for that. Trump seemed to clock out of his social [2:05] media with a final post two minutes later at 2.45 a.m. before picking it up again and starting to post [2:14] on social media again just after 7.30 a.m. Donald Trump has appeared to fall asleep at White House [2:21] events before a number of times over the past few months. In fact, it might be one of the reasons the [2:27] latest polling makes some sense. This in Fox News' poll, for instance, shows that 55 percent of [2:34] registered American voters say they do not believe Donald Trump has the mental soundness to serve [2:41] effectively as president. That number is up seven points since late 2024. Now, these facts might only [2:48] rise to the level of disturbing. Were we living in the best of times? But at the end of the eighth week [2:54] of the war with Iran and amid a slew of other major challenges on the economy and on and on, Donald Trump [3:02] is facing head on a criticism he and his allies levied against his predecessor on a near daily basis, [3:09] that he's simply not up to the job he has or even on the job often enough to perform it adequately. [3:16] That is where we start today with Media Matters for America president, Angelo Carison. [3:21] Also joining us, former Trump White House deputy press secretary and home of the brave spokesperson, [3:26] Sarah Matthews, is back with us. She's now a contributor for The Bulwark. [3:30] And with me at the table, host of Politics Nation, president of the National Action Network, [3:34] the Reverend Al Sharpton's here. Sarah, I'm so happy to have you back and to see you. [3:38] Just tell me, I feel like there's this debate that rages about whether he's worse than he was. [3:43] I feel like he seems in a lot of ways as crazy as ever, but you worked for him. You were inside [3:48] the White House. Tell me how he seems to you. Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that largely that [3:54] this is not anything new when it comes to this erratic posting and him posting unhinged things. [4:00] I just think it's gotten even worse in the sense that it's a little bit more extreme. [4:04] In the first administration, we didn't have him posting about wanting to annihilate an entire [4:09] civilization. And so I think that there's something to be said that it seems like he's lost his fastball [4:15] and that he's not beating father time. Look, you can't beat father time. And I think old age is [4:20] catching up with him. And so he's not as on it and as sharp as he once was. And I think that is [4:26] also just enhancing the craziness that was already kind of there and bringing it to a whole new level. [4:32] And we're seeing that play out. Sarah, do you think he's cognizant of the questions being asked [4:40] about his faculties? 71% of all Americans don't believe he has the temperament to be president. [4:47] 55% of Americans don't believe he has the mental fitness for the job that he has. [4:54] He seemed to be so focused on those things when he'd constantly take the MOCA test, [5:00] which is a dementia screen. Not really the intellectual flex that he seems to think it is [5:07] with Fox News interviewers and all manner of people. But do you think he's following these [5:13] polls this time? Yeah, I do. I think that's why he is constantly flexing this cognitive test and [5:20] bragging about how he aced it, even though it's not really that much of an accomplishment. Anyone [5:25] could ace it as long as you don't have dementia or onset early dementia. And I think he is following [5:31] it. And I think he does feel insecure about how the public perceives him and his old age. Look, [5:36] he was very critical of his predecessor and calling him sleepy Joe Biden and going after his mental [5:42] acuity. And so I do think that he is following these polls. And that's why you see him out there [5:48] trying to push back on this narrative. But when he's falling asleep in the Oval Office and these [5:53] meetings and posting these erratic unhinged things on his true social, it's certainly not helping the [6:00] public perception of him and if he's mentally sound for the job. And I do think, too, that in the first [6:06] Trump administration, that people were willing to give him a little bit longer of a leash and they [6:11] tolerated the kind of craziness from him. But we're not seeing that so much in the second administration, [6:17] because I think so many people that voted for him this time around are unhappy with him, [6:21] as reflected in the polling where he's hitting record lows of disapproval because people feel [6:27] like they have buyer's remorse, that they were not they're not getting what they were promised on [6:31] the campaign trail, whether that be him getting us into a new war in the Middle East, something he [6:37] said he wouldn't do, or him not bringing down prices and actually making prices skyrocket even [6:42] higher, whether that's grocery prices or the price of gas, you name it. And so I think that people [6:48] aren't going to be as tolerant of this kind of crazy behavior from him when they feel like he [6:54] isn't doing a good job. [6:55] Can I ask the control room just to put the picture back up one more time of him falling [7:03] asleep? I mean, if if someone were sitting on the set and fell asleep, like I would send a text and [7:12] ask someone to come out and bring them a coffee like whose job is it to either kick the press out, [7:18] Sarah, or like kick him under the table? Or I mean, is it is it the instructions for it looks like [7:25] Lutnik, Oz and Kennedy? I guess they pass for our health people these days. Like, [7:30] is it one of their job to like wake him up? Or like, what's the instrument? Trump's so obsessed [7:35] with his appearance. Like we know from the Atlantic, he didn't go honor troops who lost their lives [7:42] serving in World War One because he didn't want to mess up his hair. Like the whole room can see [7:47] him asleep. Whose job is it in this White House to wake him up or get the press out so we don't have [7:53] all these images of Donald Trump asleep at his desk? Yeah, it's horrible optics, like you [7:59] mentioned, and something that he would obviously care about. And I feel like it's kind of surprising [8:04] that honestly, the press team wasn't there to wrangle the press. Like they always have a press [8:09] wrangler who's on site for these types of Oval Office events. And they're in charge of wrangling the [8:16] media and getting them in and out of the room. And they're usually the person you hear cut the [8:21] reporters off and they're yelling, OK, time to get out and pushing them out the door when they [8:26] feel like the press conference has gone on too long or the president has to get to another [8:30] engagement. And so you would think that someone on the press team would see him falling asleep and [8:35] would have the thought to think, hmm, maybe we need to get the press wrangler in there to cut this [8:40] short or have someone pass him a note, whatever it is. But obviously that isn't happening. So it's a [8:46] little surprising that they wouldn't be more on top of it. Did he fall asleep in the first term a lot [8:51] in meetings or does that appear to be happening more frequently? I think it's happening more [8:56] frequently. I don't think it's something that happened as often. I mean, if you look back on [9:00] videos of Trump in 2016 and even throughout his first term, he had so much more vigor in life to him [9:07] and was always like the energizer bunny, in my opinion. I mean, the guy just could run on very little [9:15] sleep and just go, go, go and hit multiple campaign events in one day. But I don't think [9:20] you're seeing that as much. And I do think that's just his old age catching up to him. Look, he turns [9:24] 80 next month. And so it's definitely something that I don't think he wants to admit. Obviously, [9:31] anyone struggles with realizing and accepting the fact that you're getting older. And this is a very [9:37] demanding job. And so when you're sleeping for four hours a night, he can't perform in the same way [9:44] that he once was able to. And so him not sleeping through the night and posting on Twitter back in [9:50] the day or true social now, that's not really anything new. It seems like it's happening more [9:55] frequently. But then I think that that's contributing to him also falling asleep more [9:59] frequently in these meetings now because he can't perform in the same way on that little sleep [10:06] that he maybe once was able to in his younger age.