Donald Trump appears to fall asleep during 9/11 memorial as people outraged at president
Donald Trump has been criticised for appearing to fall asleep during a memorial for the victims of 9/11.
The US leader chose to attend a memorial held outside the Pentagon in Virginia today, rather than joining all previous living presidents at the memorial at the former World Trade Center site.
However, the US President didn't make a good first impression at the event, as viewers noticed that the 80-year-old appeared to have nodded off in his seat.
"Watching the 9/11 memorial and Trump is asleep," penned one person in response to the stream.
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"Trump is literally falling asleep at the wheel at the Pentagon Ceremony #911," wrote a second, while a third added: "They just showed Trump at the Pentagon and he is f***ing ASLEEP!! JHC"
This isn't the first time which Trump has been accused of falling asleep during events, with the POTUS previously appearing to be snoozing during a November 2025 press conference while a previous bizarre online theory suggested the president has a 'Zapper woman' on hand to keep him awake during important moments.
Why did Donald Trump not attend the 9/11 memorial in New York?
Trump was originally pegged to attend the official New York event at the World Trade Center site, however, plans were altered after memorial planners told the administration about its policy prohibiting political figures from addressing the crowd, per The New York Times.
The National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum hasn't allowed any political figure to host a talk at the Ground Zero ceremony since 2012.
Instead, it provides a space for everyone all over New York to remember each of the 2,977 victims who perished that day.
As a result, Trump decided to attend the Virginia plane crash site instead, where he is able to make an address.
Earlier this week, Trump spoke at an event honouring those who died, claiming that two ‘big, strong’ firemen had helped him exit the building at Ground Zero on that fateful day.
He said: "The United States Steel building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down,” Trump said during Tuesday’s Tunnel to Towers Foundation event.
"We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big, strong guys. And I'm not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arms, said, 'Got to get out of here.'"
“And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me," he added before telling the crowd he had sent workers to the site.
“For three months after Sept. 11, the flames raged in the rubble of Ground Zero. For nine months, rescue and recovery crews worked day and night on the site," he said.
“I want to just thank my people. I took a lot of my — I was building a big building in New York and I took the whole crew right down there after this happened and they had no hesitation. Everyone went down with me."
Since the claims were said, many have been sceptical of the information Trump had given, with his nephew, 63-year-old Fred Trump III, saying otherwise.
“I try not to comment personally about my uncle, but his claim that he brought a crew of workers to help at the site so offends me that I need to speak out,” he wrote on X.
“He was not building a ‘big building’ at the time. The only crew he claimed to bring to the site would have been secretarial and accounting employees from Trump Tower. I knew many of them, and pretty sure they were not capable physically to help (if they could, I am sure they would try).”
The New York Magazine also called Trump's assertion of his apparent time at Ground Zero a ‘weird lie’, leading the POTUS to call it out on his Truth Social platform.
"I was there, obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter, with a large group of Construction Workers,” Trump posted, adding that ‘everything’ he said at the event on Tuesday had been ‘exactly accurate’.
Topics: Donald Trump, US News
Britt Jones