Sleepy defendant Trump needs better technique for napping at New York hush-money trial

One of the first things we’d learn from Donald Trump going on trial is that he’s a public sleeper.

I have lots of sympathy for public sleepers. At times, I have joined their ranks. And after years of covering trials in South Florida courtrooms, I can attest that the condensed action-packed courtroom dramas we see on TV are nothing like real trials, which are prone to small periods of interest punctuated by large stretches of tedium.

And so, I’m not surprised that defendant Trump in his New York hush-money criminal trial has taken to napping at the defense table during the protracted jury-selection process.

This has been covered with a Pulitzer level of reportage by journalists who witnessed Trump’s naps at close range. I guess you can say that they were in the room when nothing happened.

“Trump's head slowly dropped, his eyes closed,” wrote Frank G. Runyeon, a courts reporter for Law360. “It jerked back upward. He adjusts himself. 

“Then, his head droops again. He straightens up, leaning back. His head (droops) for a third time, he shakes his shoulders,” Runyeon continued as he described Trump’s mid-morning nap on Tuesday. “Eyes closed still. His head drops. Finally, he pops his eyes open.”

This is the kind of detailed observation we usually see by reporters covering executions at Florida State Prison. Well, except for that last line about the eyes popping open again.

But it’s not confined to Death Row. You can brush up on this kind of painstaking reporting by going on fact-finding trips to South Florida shopping malls and observing the unlucky husbands sitting in those concourse chairs while their wives are shopping.

Going, going, gone. The key is the balancing of the head. An experienced day sleeper can push his or her head deep enough into the neck, where the torso serves as a stable base and the head rests motionless on that base. 

Rookies leave their heads dangling on the end of an extended neck, allowing them to flop around like an untended garden hose.

Trump’s day sleeping expertise is apparently on the same level as his unfamiliarity with how NATO funding works.

And his courtroom trips to la-la land have already netted Trump the nickname “Don Snoreleone”, with people showing up on street corners with signs saying, “Honk to wake up Don Snoreleone.” 

It’s also responsible for this exchange between CNN’s Jake Tapper and The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman. 

“Forty minutes ago you wrote an observation that, I was very surprised, Trump appears to be sleeping. His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack,” Tapper told Haberman on air. “Tell us about that.”

Haberman answered: “Well, Jake, he appeared to be asleep.”

They’ll be teaching that one in journalism school. 

Trump, who has a habit of referring to President Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe” and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as “Low Energy Jeb” has naturally denied his own observable interludes of old-man day sleeping.

His spokesman called these observations “100 percent fake news.”

If he keeps napping day after day, it will be harder to deny it. I suggest he come up with another explanation. Maybe blame it all on hanging out with Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy. 

Trump could accuse Lindell of being part of “The Deep Sleep,” a psychologically sinister plot to make Trump appear to be old and weak.

Imagine debate betweenTrump and DeSantis over their COVID response

It’s a good thing this public sleeping isn’t happening in Florida. It would be a little awkward.

Gov. Ron DeSantis just signed a law that bans homeless people from sleeping in public, saying without a touch of irony that it will help those people to “get back on their feet.”

Maybe it’s not just the homeless who need to get on their feet. 

Mar-a-Lago is Florida’s most famouscrime scene. Why were uniformed U.S. Marines there?

It reminds me of the time I watched the impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton in 1999 from the gallery of the U.S. Senate. It was a very snoozy proceeding, and all the senators, fulfilling their Constitutional role of serving as impeachment jurors, were required to be present for every word.

There were long stretches of coma-inducing presentations. So, rather than be seen sleeping at their desks during the trial, the senators would get up and stand along the walls of the Senate chamber. 

At times, there were so many of them, it looked more like a police lineup than anything else.

Maybe Trump should consider that. Every time he feels himself slipping into another nap, he could stand up and find a wall to lean on in the courtroom. 

It would make him more of a sympathetic character, and even more importantly, reduce the number of drool stains on his clothing.

Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, part of the Gannett Newspapers chain.