White House Flips Out Over Newest Video of Trump Asleep in a Meeting
https://newrepublic.com/post/211406/white-house-video-trump-asleep-meeting
White House Flips Out Over Newest Video of Trump Asleep in a Meeting
The president’s health issues are becoming more obvious by the day. The White House doesn’t want to admit it.
The Trump administration is angry that President Trump was caught sleeping on camera again.
The administration’s official Rapid Response account on X took aim at a video clip from Kamala Harris’s news account @Headquarters showing the president clearly slumping back in his chair in the Oval Office and dozing off while surrounded by White House officials Thursday. They posted a screenshot from the video and claimed, “His eyes are literally open in the clip you posted, you dumbass mouth-breathers.”
While Trump was awake in the meeting long enough to announce his “Trump Promenade,” a concrete patio extending from the back of the Lincoln Memorial to the Potomac River, the video clearly shows the president falling asleep. It’s only the latest example of Trump “resting his eyes” in public view during his second term in office, as it now seems to happen anytime he’s at an event or meeting where other people talk for a few minutes.
Lately, the administration has tried in vain to push back against anyone pointing out Trump’s impromptu siestas, angrily posting on social media that the president is simply blinking. Trump’s own Cabinet members, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, go out of their way to absurdly claim that they’ve never seen the president sleeping.
But the public has eyes and can see on live video that Trump is clearly getting older, with visible health issues that aren’t ever explained in the administration’s reports about his health. No matter how many times White House officials insult those who point it out, it’s obvious that there is something wrong with Trump’s physical and mental condition.
Trump’s “Great American State Fair” Somehow Gets More Pathetic
The event went from being a series of concerts to just one rally with the most boring singers.
President Trump’s “Great American State Fair” has grown even bleaker, as supporters will be getting a rally and listening to “Ave Maria” rather than Martina McBride—or any of the other artists who pulled out of the festival.
“On Wednesday, June 24th, at 7 P.M., in magnificent Washington, D.C., now totally beautified, and one of the Safest Cities anywhere in the World, and in celebration of our Country’s 250 Year History, we will be bringing you, LIVE, the Greatest Rally, EVER! It will be special at every level—A Rally to end all Rallies!” the president wrote Thursday on Truth Social. “We don’t want singers with no talent, but big fees to put you to sleep, we’ve told them all to stay home. All we want is you, me, a few speakers, and the Greatest Music ever played, the same Music you have listened to for years!”
That music will include Christopher Macchio singing “Ave Maria” and Lee Greenwood singing his “God Bless the U.S.A.” The U.S. Army Band and Armed Forces Choir will also be there, Trump announced, alongside “a fine and highly dignified gentleman known as, President DONALD J. TRUMP!”
This event sounds more and more pitiful by the day. We went from at least having some washed-up ’90s artists headlining the event to a dreary, full-on MAGA rally for America’s 250th birthday. Perhaps that was the point all along. Hopefully it rains.
New 60 Minutes Boss Rakes in Millions as Top Staff Eye the Exits
Even more senior correspondents are weighing whether they should stay with the show.
CBS News is spending a lot more cash to fund Bari Weiss’s 60 Minutes takeover.
Weiss’s new pick to run the venerated newsmagazine, Nick Bilton, is making far more than his predecessor. The British-born contrarian was installed as 60 Minutes’ new executive producer last week, and is reportedly salaried at $2.5 million—a million more than veteran broadcast journalist Tanya Simon, who ran the show from April 2025 until just last week, according to Page Six.
Weiss announced Bilton’s hire the same day that she fired a large swath of the show’s crew, in an event that has since been internally referred to as “Black Thursday.” The axed staff included Simon, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi (who criticized Weiss’s decision to delay her report on a notoriously brutal CECOT megaprison in El Salvador), correspondent Cecilia Vega, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich.
Scott Pelley, who had been one of the show’s rotating faces for 22 years, was canned Wednesday after he openly questioned Bilton’s appointment during a contentious all-staff meeting earlier this week. At the same meeting, Bilton suggested that more layoffs could be on the horizon.
The show’s remaining correspondents have since begun to question their own futures at the decorated program: Correspondents Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, and Jon Wertheim reportedly held an hourlong meeting Wednesday on the matter, according to Status. Stahl’s contract has already expired, and it is not clear if it will be renewed. Three sources that spoke to the outlet shared that Whitaker is considering his options and might leave of his own accord. Anderson Cooper already left by his own volition last month.
Bilton is by no means the show’s typical hire, and many critics of the hiring decision have questioned what qualifies him to run 60 Minutes at all. Bilton has previously worked as a tech columnist, writing for Vanity Fair and The New York Times. He seemingly left the news industry during the latter half of the last decade in order to pursue screenwriting in Hollywood, and has since worked on scripts and produced projects for major studios, including Lionsgate, Netflix, and Disney.
It is not publicly known how much the program’s highly respected, longtime showrunner Bill Owens made before he was forced out in April 2025 for refusing to bend to Donald Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit. Trump sued 60 Minutes over its sit-down interview with Kamala Harris prior to Election Day 2024, claiming that the program had essentially “defrauded” the American public due to a minor editing decision. Legal experts condemned the suit at the time as meritless, yet CBS’s parent company, Paramount, nonetheless agreed to pay Trump $16 million in order to settle the case out of court.
Trump Pitches New “Trump Promenade” in Between Naps in White House
The president revealed a new project dedicated to himself after dozing off in a meeting.
In between naps during a televised White House event Thursday, President Donald Trump suggested creating a new promenade outside the Lincoln Memorial and naming it after himself.
“The Lincoln Memorial, the front was supposed to be the back, the back was supposed to be the front, it never got built,” Trump said shortly after appearing to doze off. “They wanna call it the Trump Promenade, but I don’t know if I wanna call it that. But it’s beautiful, it’s a beautiful project. And it’s gonna take the Lincoln Memorial right down to the Potomac.”
The president again appeared to struggle to stay awake after making the suggestion.
The Trump administration has already spent a massive sum on construction projects around Washington, D.C., including specifically around the Lincoln Memorial. He has dedicated $5 million of taxpayer money to covering four lion statues near the memorial in gold leaf and $13 million to redoing the Reflecting Pool. He has also proposed building a 250-foot arch, which would be so large it would overshadow the entire Lincoln Memorial. That project would cost at least $100 million.
GOP Senator Cassidy Makes Unbelievable Move to Kill Trump’s Slush Fund
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy is taking action after losing his primary election following Trump’s endorsement of his opponent.
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy has joined his Democratic colleague, Cory Booker, in a court filing to block President Trump’s so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
Cassidy and Booker filed an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit against the fund, alleging that it goes against the Constitution by making “an end-run around Congress’s institutional authority” and violating the spending, appropriations, and appointments clauses.
The senators’ brief points out that despite a federal judge temporarily blocking the fund last week, Trump refused to say it was dead in a podcast interview earlier this week. They attacked the origin of the fund, Trump’s excessively favorable settlement with the IRS following his lawsuit against the agency after his tax returns were leaked (during his own first term).
“Because the very lawsuit that sparked the settlement was collusive and therefore could not be heard in a federal court, and accordingly no monetary award would have been available through that collusive litigation, the Judgment Fund is not available,” the brief states.
It’s another anti-Trump move from Cassidy following his primary election loss last month to Representative Julia Letlow, who had the president’s endorsement. Cassidy has also taken aim at Trump’s ballroom and his choice of Bill Pulte as director of national intelligence. But the only reason he appears to be showing courage now is because he’ll be out of a job by next year.
That seems to be one of the few things that gets Republicans to criticize Trump: when he withdraws his support and ends their careers. Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a staunch MAGA acolyte, reportedly turned on Trump after he didn’t back her running for the Senate. But this effort from Cassidy at least carries some weight, and could help kill Trump’s slush fund in court.
