Donald Trump has been filmed apparently falling asleep in public at least six times in recent years, from the Oval Office to Buckingham Palace, just days before his 80th birthday on Sunday 14 June, prompting questions over his health and fitness for office. The latest clip, shared widely on social media, appeared to show Trump nodding off during an official White House press conference, as Alaska's governor spoke about lifting restrictions on commercial fishing in parts of the Pacific.
Concern over Trump's alertness has simmered for years, but it has sharpened as the President and current Commander in Chief edges towards 80. Supporters tend to dismiss the viral videos as unflattering camera angles or momentary eye-resting.
Critics and some medical voices now argue the pattern looks harder to brush aside, especially when one cardiologist has openly linked his apparent daytime drowsiness to a higher risk of dementia in older adults. Nothing has been clinically confirmed, and the White House has not announced any diagnosis, so, strictly speaking, all such assessments remain speculative and should be treated with caution.
The newest video came from the Oval Office this week. Trump is seen sitting behind the Resolute Desk, eyes closed for several seconds, body tilting slightly to his right, before stirring as the room continues around him. The event was meant to showcase the administration's decision to remove curbs on commercial fishing in protected Pacific zones, with Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy extolling fishing's role in the US economy as the president appeared to drift.
The scene was awkward partly because it was far from an isolated moment. Earlier in the same week, Trump was courtside at Madison Square Garden for Game 3 of the NBA Finals, watching the New York Knicks face the San Antonio Spurs.
Trump, who has long presented himself as a Knicks loyalist, was seated alongside team owner James Dolan and his granddaughter Kai Trump when cameras cut to him with his eyes shut, hands clasped in his lap. His head drooped for roughly 45 seconds before he jerked back up, a classic micro-sleep to anyone who has ever nodded off on a late train.
Dolan has pushed back hard at that interpretation. Appearing on WFAN's The Carton Show, the Knicks owner insisted Trump had not dozed at all. 'Where do they get this? I was with him the whole time. We were talking the whole time. Unless he was sleepwalking he was very much awake, he was very much engaged,' he said, casting the viral clip as a bad-faith reading of a packed night.
🚨DONALD TRUMP IS ASLEEP IN THE OVAL OFFICE.
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) June 11, 2026
Today Trump is sleepy, angry, drowsy, and dopey.
Trump HATES when he’s caught on camera sleeping. You know what to do. pic.twitter.com/jr1xu20DNn
Memorial Day Clip Deepens Donald Trump Health Questions
If the basketball footage could be dismissed as a lull during a long game, the images from Arlington National Cemetery are harder to wave away. In May, Trump was filmed during a Memorial Day ceremony, head seemingly bowed in something beyond reflection. In several clips, his eyes appear shut for extended stretches, his posture slack, as the formal observances continue.
After reviewing the videos, cardiologist Dr Jonathan Reiner told CNN he saw a pattern. 'The president has severe daytime somnolence. He falls asleep very often,' he said. 'He's fallen asleep in the Oval Office on multiple occasions with people talking to him in the cabinet room, and I was concerned yesterday that he might have fallen asleep at Arlington National Cemetery during Memorial Day observances. Chronic insomnia is a severe illness. It can result in an increase in risk of dementia, decrease in cognitive effects in older people.'
It is a striking intervention, though it bears repeating that Reiner has not examined Trump directly, and no official medical report has confirmed chronic insomnia or dementia. The assessment rests on public footage and prior reports of the president nodding off, which means it is informed but not diagnostic.
The Arlington episode followed earlier scenes from inside Trump's own Cabinet room. In December 2025, during what was by all accounts a fractious Cabinet meeting, cameras captured the president as Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised his foreign policy record at length. As Rubio lauded a 'transformational' shift supposedly putting US interests first, Trump's eyelids drooped and stayed shut long enough for observers to question whether he was listening at all.
Pressed on such images, Trump has offered a blunter explanation. In a January interview with The Wall Street Journal, he denied falling asleep in public and said he sometimes simply closes his eyes. 'It's very relaxing to me,' he said. 'Sometimes they'll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they'll catch me with the blink.'
Donald Trump’s health is once again under intense scrutiny as he nears his 80th birthday, with renewed claims and speculation circulating about his physical and cognitive condition: https://t.co/dmJBGEB9qg pic.twitter.com/pXqwC0I9lo
— Radar Online (@radar_online) June 10, 2026
Donald Trump Courtroom 'Naps' Fuel Dementia Fears
The same defence was harder to mount in Manhattan criminal court in April 2024. There, as he faced charges over an alleged $130,000 'hush money' payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, reporters in the room described the President apparently nodding off more than once. On The New York Times live blog, journalist Maggie Haberman wrote: 'Trump appears to be sleeping. His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack.'
Trump convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records, though he received an unconditional discharge and is currently appealing. The visual memory many carried out of the courtroom was not of outrage or defiance, but of an ageing defendant struggling to stay awake during his own trial.
Years earlier, the same criticism attached to a setting that, for most leaders, would be a lifetime highlight. During Trump's state visit to the UK, he attended a Buckingham Palace state dinner in his honour. As Queen Elizabeth II delivered her welcoming remarks, cameras lingered on the president. He closed his eyes more than once, at one point jolting as if startling himself awake.
Online reaction was unforgiving rather than medically curious. 'You fell asleep during THE QUEEN'S speech! You are a total embarrassment to our country and the world,' one commentator posted, capturing a strain of fury that mixes etiquette with politics.
Individually, any of these clips could be passed off as a bad moment, an ill-timed blink, a man in his late seventies trying to grab a breath. Strung together, in an election era hypersensitive to age and acuity, they form a running visual question over whether Trump's public 'naps' are merely human or an early warning his own doctors have yet to acknowledge.
