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Trump Seen Struggling to Stay Awake Repeatedly in Cabinet Meeting Video

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Once again, President Donald Trump appeared to struggle to stay awake, this time during his mid-Tuesday televised Cabinet meeting. At several points, the president was filmed with his eyes closed, occasionally reopening them while seeming disengaged.

In one 30-second clip, the president’s eyes close numerous times, then Trump nods when he is mentioned. In a shorter clip, Trump also struggles to keep his eyes open, as his hand holds up his head.

In a 23-second clip, the president is hunched over, slouching in his chair, his eyes closed in what could be described as appearing to nod off.

Trump slouches and appears to try to listen as HUD Secretary Scott Turner speaks, in this 79-second video.

READ MORE: GOP Touts ‘Gulf of America Act’ in Bold New List of Party ‘Accomplishments’

In a 17-second clip, journalist Aaron Rupar wrote, “Trump’s face is becoming contorted as he desperately tries to cling to consciousness.” In another, he called the president “Dozy Don.”

But in perhaps the most extreme capture of the president appearing to doze off, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks, Trump is totally hunched over, his eyes closed, his head then falls forward, and he appears to try to wake up before seemingly falling back asleep.

While this is not the first time the president has appeared to fall asleep on camera, it comes after a massive late-night social media spree, in which Trump posted or reposted over 150 times, as Alternet reported.

Axios’ Marc Caputo noted that “Trump went on a Truth Social bender last night, posting 158 times from 9pm Monday to 12am Tuesday Just before 5:30 am, he started hitting social media again.”

The media is beginning to notice.

READ MORE: ‘No Republicans Willing to Negotiate’: Health Care Subsidy Deal in Doubt

Last week, The New York Times published an in-depth look at Trump’s “signs of fatigue.”

“Mr. Trump appeared to doze off during an event in the Oval Office,” one week after Halloween, the Times noted.

The president “has fewer public events on his schedule and is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips,” according to the Times. “He also keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m., on average.”

“During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6,” the Times added, “Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs.”

“At one point, Mr. Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds. At another point, he opened his eyes and looked toward a line of journalists watching him. He stood up only after a guest who was standing near him fainted and collapsed.”

READ MORE: Student’s Bible-Based Essay Grade Leads University to Put Instructor on Leave

 

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Trump Disavows Prediction Markets — His Family Has Financial Ties to Them: NYT

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President Donald Trump on Thursday told reporters that he was “never much in favor” of prediction markets. “I don’t like it conceptually. It is what it is. I’m not happy with any of that stuff.”

“Well, you know, the whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino,” Trump, a former casino owner, told reporters. “And you look at what’s going on all over the world, in Europe and every place they’re doing these betting things.”

“I’m not happy with any of these sites,” Trump said. “They have predictive markets — it’s a crazy world, it’s a much different world than it was.”

And yet, Trump and some of his family members stand to benefit financially from those very markets, according to The New York Times.

“The president’s publicly traded media company unveiled its own prediction market product last year,” the Times reports. “And the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has ties to two of the industry’s top firms, including Polymarket.”

READ MORE: ‘Now Do Hanging’ Republican Demands After DOJ Announces Firing Squads for Executions

Ethics experts the Times consulted say Trump’s public statements directly contradict his family’s financial interests in the industry.

Despite Trump’s admonition, new regulations are not expected. Last year, the Trump administration “backed away from enforcement efforts against Polymarket, and it is unclear whether regulators will adopt any new oversight measures.”

The Times reports that the White House “has warned staff not to wager on government decisions, but his family’s involvement with these firms undermines the president’s message.”

U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) who is sponsoring legislation to ban government officials from betting on prediction markets using classified information, has raised concerns about national security risks. Chances that the bill would pass through a GOP-majority Congress are uncertain.

“It’s too politically dicey,” she said. “There is not a single important issue of the day where I don’t feel the shadow of Trump and his sons.”

READ MORE: Trump Believes He’s a ‘Savior’ Sent by God and Will Never Cede Power: Stoddard

 

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‘Now Do Hanging’ Republican Demands After DOJ Announces Firing Squads for Executions

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A Republican member of Congress is calling for death row prisoners to be hanged after the U.S. Department of Justice announced it will move to expedite death row executions, including — for the first time in federal civilian history — by adding firing squads. The DOJ also said it will readopt lethal injections.

Declaring that it has a “solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences,” the DOJ said in a statement that it will work to clear the way for the Department to “carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals.”

The Department called the executions critical steps “to deterring the most barbaric crimes, delivering justice for victims, and providing long-overdue closure to surviving loved ones.”

The DOJ said it “has rescinded the Biden-Garland moratorium on federal executions and has authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.”

Before leaving office, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life in prison.

READ MORE: Trump Believes He’s a ‘Savior’ Sent by God and Will Never Cede Power: Stoddard

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

“Now do hanging,” demanded U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee.

Burchett last year suggested that House Republicans might offer convicted sex trafficker and Epstein partner Ghislaine Maxwell the possibility of a reduced sentence in exchange for her testimony.

In 2023, after the mass shooting deaths of three nine-year-olds and three adults at a Nashville Christian elementary school, Burchett told reporters nothing could be done.

“We’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals,” he told reporters.

READ MORE: Trump Found His New Favorite Reason to Void 2020

 

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Trump Believes He’s a ‘Savior’ Sent by God and Will Never Cede Power: Stoddard

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President Donald Trump has little intention of leaving the White House says veteran political analyst A.B. Stoddard, arguing that he believes he is a “savior” and will either try to find some way to run for another term, cancel the election, or do something else radical.

“I don’t think he has any intention of leaving,” Stoddard told columnist Bill Kristol.

She believes there are “two paths” for Trump.

“He does not want to fall apart in public,” Stoddard said, adding that he will be forced to “make a calculation at some point.”

Asking if Trump can “serve and walk across stages, make speeches, be as visible as he wants to be, which he really needs?” she noted that the president “needs to be on camera as many days a week as he can.”

“I think he will make the calculation that he cannot run again if he’s feeling that he’s aging too quickly” for another term, she said.

READ MORE: ‘What Evil Looks Like’: Columnist Says Trump Presides Over a ‘Circus of Death and Chaos’

“He has no intention, I believe, of having any kind of successor that’s not in his family. So he’s either going to find a way to try to run for [another] term, or cancel the election, or do something very radical,” which is “not beyond him,” she said.

Stoddard says she could see Trump trying to pass his presidency off to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, his son, Donald Trump Jr. or his daughter, Ivanka Trump — but not Eric Trump. And he’s not going to walk away from the money he is making now — the most he’s ever made in his life.

It’s “absolute lunacy” to think that he is going to walk away from “the two things that soothe his demons,” which are “adulation and money.”

“I genuinely believe, Bill, that he believes that he is some kind of, you know, savior,” Stoddard declared.

“I mean, it’s always about how he was brought here by God,” she continued. “I don’t know that he has [the] specifics down, but he certainly believes he is special, and he craves that, that central, you know, all the attention has to be on him.”

She also said that had Trump lost the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton and never been president, he would have “just sat on Fox three days a week, just bashing her.”

She concluded that she cannot see Trump just going off “like an old man into the sunset.”

READ MORE: Pope Leo: Church Should Focus More on Justice and Less on Same-Sex Blessings

 

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