Seth Meyers Turns 'Sleepy Trump' Into Late-Night Payback for Biden-Era Nickname

Seth Meyers is turning one of President Donald Trump’s favorite attack lines back on him.

On Late Night, Meyers mocked Trump after clips showed the 80-year-old president with his eyes closed during the July 29 funeral for Sen. Lindsey Graham.

“Look, I don’t know if he nodded off or not, but he definitely looks like he’s fighting sleep hard,” Meyers said. “He looks like me after I’ve had three White Claws at the beach.”

“You’re not sleeping enough, bro,” Meyers joked. “You need to get eight hours instead of reposting AI slop at 3 a.m.”

He then played an edited clip of Trump appearing to fall asleep during a Cabinet meeting while Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke. Audio from a recent Michigan heckler shouting “pedophile protector” was layered over the clip, jolting Trump awake in the bit.

Amber Day, professor and chair of History, Literature, and the Arts at Bryant University and author of multiple books on political satire, said the joke has an obvious built-in history.

“The comedy frames that stick tend to be the ones that strike a nerve in some way or do a good job of encapsulating something that we have all noticed. In this case, President Trump sort of seeded this framing himself by speaking about it so much in connection with Joe Biden,” Day explained. “There is an added layer of schadenfreude for many onlookers.”

Laura Smith, presidential historian and assistant professor at Cumberland University, said age-related humor has mattered in presidential politics before. She pointed to Ronald Reagan using humor to rebuff criticism of his age in his 1984 debate against Walter Mondale, saying he would not “exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.”

Trump, she said, has used nicknames differently.

“Donald Trump has successfully applied nicknames to his opponents like ‘Low Energy Jeb’ and ‘Sleepy Joe’ that have increased speculation and seemingly impacted public opinion during campaigns,” Smith said. “It is likely this is a tactic he will continue, but the question of whether it will succeed in continuing to distract attention away from his own age and fitness remains to be seen.”

“A joke becomes a narrative when it names something people already suspect,” said Amore Philip, founder of Apples and Oranges Public Relations.

“Comedy lowers the burden of proof: a bit does not have to be accurate, it only has to be repeatable, and repetition is what hardens a punchline into a ‘fact everyone knows’,” Philip added.

“The reliable counter is not denial, which only re-airs the clip, but consistent contrary imagery over time,” she said. “Public opinion moves on accumulation, not on any single monologue.”