Donald Trump passed off tricky questions to JD Vance after appearing to nod off during an earlier press conference.
The 79-year-old held a dinner with central Asian countries at the White House on Thursday night, where he took questions from the media.
The president, who appeared tired at points during the appearance, was seated between the vice president and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Trump was asked by a reporter about the significance of Kazakhstan joining the Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic normalization between Israel and several Arab states, given that the country has held ties with Israel for over three decades.
The president immediately said to Vance, “You want to answer that, please?”
“What the president has done is signal that the momentum of the Abraham Accords is alive and well in the second administration,” Vance said. “It’s not just going to be Kazakhstan, but also several other countries that join in the months to come.”
A Fox News reporter then asked Trump about a federal judge in Rhode Island ordering his administration to fully fund food stamps for low-income Americans by the end of this week.
“What’s your message to folks as they work this out in the courts and in Congress as we’re heading into Thanksgiving?” the reporter asked Trump.
The president mumbled, “You wanna go with it?” to Vance, who obediently answered for Trump.
“It’s an absurd ruling because you have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the midst of a Democrat government shutdown,” Vance said.
“In the midst of a shutdown, we can’t have a federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation... The president has told us to keep as much going as humanly possible.”
Vance warned of SNAP benefits running out before Trump suddenly perked up and started talking about food stamp payments impacting the government’s funding.
“Biden went totally crazy. Gave it to anybody that would ask,” Trump said of the benefits, taking the chance to criticize the former president.
“Gave it to people that were able-bodied, had no problem. Anybody that would ask... This wasn’t meant for that. It was meant for people that had real problems. In many cases, people that were down and out, people that could be saved. It wasn’t meant for people that could do whatever they want, the people that say, ‘Well, I don’t think I’ll work. I’ll just, you know, collect this money.’”
Trump’s bizarre behavior follows the president’s announcement Thursday morning of deals designed to lower the cost of weight-loss drugs and injections at the White House.
The 79-year-old seemed to have his eyes shut at several times during the press announcement, where a man also fainted, and saw the president initially freeze in front of cameras. He later spoke to the man’s wife on the phone after the medical emergency.
California Governor Gavin Newsom trolled Trump by posting a photo of him seemingly asleep during the weight loss medication press conference.
“Dozy Don is back!” Newsom’s office wrote on X, along with a photograph and a video of Trump with his eyes closed while Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, talked about obesity’s harmful effects on sleep.
Last week Vance appeared on a MAGA podcast where he claimed the president mocks people who sleep as “low-energy.”
“You go on one of these 23-hour international trips with Donald Trump, if you’re lucky, he’ll sleep two hours,” Vance told Pod Force One. “If you’re unlucky, he’ll be roaming around Air Force One, you know, busting your chops because you’ve fallen asleep: ‘Oh he’s low-energy, he’s already asleep.’”
“He really sleeps less and still has more energy than anybody that I know that’s 40 years younger than he is,” Vance added. “I mean, you hear people talk about it. You wonder how true it is. Trust me, I’ve seen it from the inside. He has unbelievable energy.”
