His ‘Sleepy Joe’ nickname for his rival seems to have come full circle, with social media users now calling Mr Trump ‘Sleepy Don’

While the rest of the world can’t peel their eyes away as Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial gets under way in New York, the former president himself appears to be far less enthralled by the proceedings.

Jury selection got under way on Monday in the first-ever criminal trial of a sitting or former president, as he faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a bid to cover up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

But, according to some courtroom reporters, Mr Trump appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open – and at one point may have even fallen asleep.

“Trump appears to be sleeping. His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack,” *New York Times *reporter Maggie Haberman reported.

The observation quickly inspired a new nickname for the 77-year-old former president: “Sleepy Don.”

  • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    In general, yes, run a candidate that is popular with voters. You can’t do that this year. No one who is unknown would have the time to get enough traction to beat Trump. No one who is well known is liked enough to motivate people to get to the polls.

    I don’t think people are saying don’t criticize Biden or don’t criticize the system that resulted in Biden being president the first time and a candidate the second time. By all means, criticize away. He could be worse, sure, but he could be so much better.

    What I think people are saying is that when you are comparing Biden and Trump, it’s important to point out that while both are not ideal, one is way worse. People who aren’t paying attention to the level they should will be less motivated to show up to the polls if they just think “everybody sucks.” Biden isn’t great, but Trump is a criminal scumbag who wants to let others strip us of our rights so that he can play king.

    • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      You can’t do that this year.

      This was said during the last election. Now it’s… Biden again?

      • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        We have 6 months to go. In my opinion, the chances of having a different candidate who will beat Trump in that time is low. Six months ago or more, I would have said it was doable. Statistically, incumbents have a higher rate of reelection than new candidates. Who knows what’s going to happen.

        • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Who knows

          Kind of sums it up. No one was put forward. The election was not a surprise.

    • aibler@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      This is absolutely the reasonable take. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Biden people are trying to pretend like they love they idea of someone taking a sloppy shit on their salad just because they don’t want napalm on their salad. You can order the diarrhea dressing without acting like it is a delicacy that should be praised for its brave choice of texture.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      No one who is well known is liked enough to motivate people to get to the polls.

      Absolute poppycock. There’s maybe a dozen different Dems and Dem-aligned Independents who have enough name recognition and are significantly more popular than Biden.

      It’s the DNC leadership and their owner donors standing in the way because he serves their interests. Biden is NOT the least bad candidate possible by a long shot!

      Hell, I bet even fucking BETO would stand a better chance of a comfortable win against the worst president in US history, that’s how awful a candidate Biden is!

      • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        If our election systems were better, yes, that would be more likely to be successful, and it would certainly be preferred (at least by me). Ranked choice or approval would be awesome!

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          In no election system is gambling the very democracy of a country on a bad candidate who refuses to own up to and correct his mistakes the smart play.

          In fact, it’s EXTRA risky and stupid to insist on such a candidate in a binary system such as the US one.

          If and when this becomes the last free presidential election, it won’t be because the people was given a choice and chose poorly. It will be because Biden and the rest of the DNC leadership chose poorly and refused to listen to the warnings and eminently reasonable concerns of the people, effectively disenfranchising everyone who’s neither a member of the fascist Trump cult or an automatically obedient DNC loyalist.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      You can’t do that this year.

      Yes. We can.

      The DNC set the convention for two months from now, if that’s not enough time to run a general campaign, then why is the primary scheduled to keep going on?

      Why are so many states not able to vote in the primary until “it’s too late”?

      • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        In many elections, that would be reasonable. The difference here is Trump. We have not had a president who so blatantly breaks the law with the level of support he has while his supporters either willfully ignore it or even support it.

        So few thought he had a chance to be the Republican nominee in 2016, including Hillary’s campaign. Then, he stomped all of the other Republicans. Still, people he had no chance of winning the general election, and he won. While it is clear he hates learning of any kind (as evidenced by appointing Betsy DeVos, his inability to pay attention to briefings, etc.), his campaign has had opportunities to learn what works and what doesn’t. If the opposition is not unified on ONE candidate against Trump, Trump will win. The consequences of that are too dire, and this we gotta eat the white bread with Kraft singles sandwich. It’s better than the diarrhea sandwich people keep pointing to.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          The difference here is Trump

          This is the third election in a row where it’s trump tho…

          And if he loses, he’s likely running again. If he wins, 2028 is going to be someone else just as bad if not worse.

          We can’t run a country “paycheck to paycheck”, we have to plan further ahead than “next election”.

          Still, people he had no chance of winning the general election, and he won.

          Because we keep running unpopular candidates against him

          So let’s stop doing that? Biden barely beat trump by the skin of his teeth and Biden is substantiallynless popular than he was four years ago with his own voter base. And that cost over a Billion dollars to beat trump in 2020

          There’s no logical reason not to run a candidate that voters actually like

          • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            For the record, I am not downvoting you. Civil discussion is healthy and we need to be having these discussions.