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White House erupts after Trump caught sleeping at Lindsey Graham's funeral: 'Morons'
The White House had a sharp response on Wednesday after President Donald Trump appeared to fall asleep during his late friend Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-SC) funeral.Trump was caught on camera with his eyes closed on Tuesday after he delivered a eulogy for his Republican ally and former golf buddy during the service at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.The White House denied reports that Trump had dozed off in the church.White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told People that Trump "was reflecting on the loss of his dear friend Lindsey Graham, for whom he had just delivered a beautiful eulogy.""Anyone suggesting otherwise is a depraved moron," Ingle said.Trump administration officials have repeatedly defended the president, who has appeared to sleep during multiple Oval Office meetings and sports events.In May, the Trump administration had a similar response following an Oval Office event on maternal health where Trump was photographed with his eyes closed. "He was blinking, you absolute moron," the White House Rapid Response account wrote on X.Trump fell asleep at Lindsey Graham’s funeral pic.twitter.com/hpgtvFM4hN— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) July 28, 2026
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Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy at the White House
President Donald Trump held closed-door meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House before the world leaders paid their respects to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. NBC News' Garrett Haake reports.
Read at NBC News Politics →AxiosCenter Left
Inside Bibi's pivotal White House meeting with Trump
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed skepticism during his meeting with President Trump about the chance of a deal with Iran and discussed increasing economic pressure on Iran "through kinetic and non-kinetic means," a senior Israeli official said in a briefing with reporters. Why it matters: Tuesday's meeting was the first between Netanyahu and Trump since the start of the war on Feb. 28. It came as Trump is still trying to reach a deal with Iran but also considering a return to major combat operations. Several hours after the sitdown, Iran launched a missile attack on an American base in Jordan for the first time since Trump paused U.S. strikes in Iran on Friday. Trump vowed a serious response during an interview with Fox News Wednesday. Iran's surprise attack could push the president toward a full-scale escalation. The Israeli official said Netanyahu is awaiting Trump's decision but made it clear to him that if Iran attacks Israel, the Israeli response will be immediate and powerful.Inside the room: Iran was the main focus of the 90-minute conversation. The Israeli official said they discussed three options Trump is considering for next steps: 1. Reaching a deal with Iran. Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are still negotiating with the Iranians, though at the moment the gaps still seem wide. The Israeli official said Netanyahu told Trump he is skeptical an agreement with the Iranians can be struck. 2. Continuing the naval blockade on Iran while increasing economic pressure.3. Resuming and intensifying military strikes."We discussed all of those options at length and very candidly. Not as an attempt to promote one option over another, but to examine what the best outcome would be from each. That's what the conversation was about," the official said.Zoom in: The Israeli official said Trump expressed concern about the war's impact on energy markets and the global economy. Netanyahu told Trump the Iranian regime is mainly trying to use the only leverage it has left — the Strait of Hormuz — to force U.S. concessions. Netanyahu didn't disregard Trump's concerns but told him there are ways to continue increasing pressure on Iran's economy, which is already under severe strain, the Israeli official said."We discussed increasing the economic pressure through both kinetic and non-kinetic means. We talked about the possibility of continuing the blockade in order to pressure Iran," the Israeli official said.The Israeli official said there is a debate inside the Iranian leadership between those who are very concerned about an economic collapse and the more radical elements that think as long as they control the weapons and can support the regime's base of supporters, they don't have a problem."They're having fuel supply problems, long lines at gas stations, diesel shortages. There are small protests because the public is very frustrated. The regime is very worried about that. It's concerned that people will rise up over the economic situation," the Israeli official added. Behind the scenes: The Israeli official said Iran's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, takes a very negative line "about everything," but it is unclear whether his alleged orders really come from him. "He is alive, but nobody can testify that they've actually seen him. He told his people not to do anything without getting his approval, and even once allegedly got angry when they didn't," the Israeli official claimed.Zoom out: Netanyahu presented Trump with a map of Syria that showed that the areas Turkey controls in Syria "are 50 times larger" than the areas Israel occupies, the Israeli official said. The Israeli official claimed Turkey controls 5% of Syria while Israel controls 0.1%. Unlike the Israeli occupation in southern Syria, Turkish military presence in northern Syria is taking place today at the consent and invitation of the Syrian government, a U.S. official said. The Israeli official said Netanyahu told Trump Israel will maintain its presence in the "buffer zone" in southern Syria as long as there is a threat from "jihadist groups." "Netanyahu wanted to show this to Trump because sometimes he forms certain opinions based on inaccurate information that some people give him. If you don't find a way to change his opinion early on, it becomes fixed. So we wanted to present the facts, visually if possible," the Israeli official said.The Israeli official said Netanyahu also discussed with Trump the U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal. Trump told Netanyahu he sees the deal in the context of Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel. "We'll have something to say on the nuclear issue if we see real progress," the Israeli official said.The big picture: The Israeli official said Netanyahu told Trump, Vice President Vance and Witkoff that he is serious about reducing U.S. military aid to Israel to zero within 10 years. He stressed that he wanted to move forward with negotiating a memorandum of understanding about it.
Read at Axios →The New RepublicLeft
Trump, 80, Falls Asleep After Mocking Lindsey Graham at His Funeral
President Trump couldn’t stay awake at Lindsey Graham’s funeral Tuesday.As several well-wishers eulogized the former senator at the Washington National Cathedral, Trump could barely hold his face up and keep his eyes open. It didn’t take long for him to start dozing off, occasionally blinking to try and hide his drowsiness.Trump, face drooping heavily, is struggling to stay awake at Lindsey Graham's memorial service pic.twitter.com/E0SzRm87s2— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2026Trump is out 💤 pic.twitter.com/xeQcm5fDXM— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2026Trump is fighting nuclear war against wokeness pic.twitter.com/PnOdJn8l5k— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2026At certain points, Trump even started tilting his head as he was falling asleep. this is elder abuse pic.twitter.com/dkaZ0ZGkof— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 28, 2026All of this took place shortly after Trump delivered his own eulogy, in which he went off-script and made fun of Graham a little, with all of his friends and family present, and reminded the audience about the time he publicly shared Graham’s cell phone number. All of that was probably much too tiring for the 80-year-old Trump, and he decided to take a little rest.
Read at The New Republic →The AtlanticCenter Left
Lindsey Graham’s Last Laugh
The senator’s funeral featured foreign dignitaries, security lines, and a eulogy from the president whose approval he never stopped seeking.
Read at The Atlantic →US news | The GuardianCenter Left
Donald Trump to deliver tribute during Lindsey Graham’s funeral service – US politics live
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are scheduled to meet with the US president after attending Tuesday’s funeralSign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxOn Wednesday, in Lindsey Graham’s home state, ceremonies will begin with services and an F-16 flyover at the South Carolina state house in Columbia, followed by a procession to First Baptist Church for a public service.A private family burial will take place in Pickens county, home to Central, the small town where Graham and his younger sister and Senate successor, Darline, were born. Continue reading...
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Here Is the Schedule for Lindsey Graham’s Services and Funeral
The senator is being remembered on Tuesday in Washington and on Wednesday in South Carolina.
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Authors detail what didn’t make it into Trump White House tell-all book
In an interview posted on Monday, conservative host Ryan Girdusky spoke with Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan about their latest book, Regime Change. Girdusky argued that as people age and particularly as they reach 80, those "around them start dying.""What effect did that have on Trump's just opinion of legacy and his overarching idea of, like, what his life would be?" Girdusky asked the reporters."I mean, look, it's not like Donald Trump sits around doing sort of therapy sessions with people, but he makes — he makes comments to advisors that — and to various people and associates and confidants that they all interpret as him thinking about his own mortality," said Haberman.She said that they didn't include it in the book but that Trump was seeing the late President Jimmy Carter lying in state and commented, "about how that would be him in, you know, twenty years or something like that." "Obviously that would be a very long lifespan for him," she added, as Trump would be 100 at that age. She said that Trump claims to have a "longevity gene in his family." Still, it's something he's been thinking about "for a while." "When Ivana Trump died, it affected him pretty deeply, according to everybody around him," Haberman continued. "His sister was a complicated relationship. But he is talking about it a lot. You even heard him talk about it with Lindsay Graham the other day, just sort of drifting into it at a defense industry event with Dave McCormick and Pennsylvania. So getting things done and how limited his time on this Earth is, let alone in office and in power, is significant."Girdusky said that Trump has "scaled back public appearances" since the 2024 assassination attempt, but even prior to the shooting in Pennsylvania, Trump's public events had shrunk from multiple times a week to at most once a week. Axios reported that in 2016, Trump held a whopping 72 rallies, and in 2024, during the same period, that number shrank to 24. There were just a few months left in the election after the assassination attempt. They went on to describe just how small Trump's world has become. Girdusky said he remembered the first term in which Trump would respond to people's comments on Twitter and now he hardly has contact with anyone outside of a very small group of advisors. Swan described Trump playing music on his iPad while eating at the patio at Mar-a-Lago with a steady stream of elderly, mostly Florida, residents coming up to him to tell him how amazing he is. Even as he was making decisions about the Iran war, Swan said that having people in the room like the secretary of energy or Treasury secretary would likely have been helpful in warning him of what could happen with gas prices and the economy if he went to war with Iran. Another point they didn't detail in the book is how many people are using their relationship with Trump for financial gain. "And you're right, we didn't get into that specific area of money-making in Trump 2.0 because, frankly, if we spent everything we included on the ways everybody is making money around him, the book would have been two thousand pages long," Haberman said. She noted that he talked about "draining the swamp" in 2017, but never did it then anyway. Now it's far worse. "Lobbyists had a lot of access to him. A lot of people who had, you know, clients facing any number of issues had access to him. You know, we had — there was a whole controversy around vaping, and I think it was twenty nineteen, and that was people hiring various folks who were close to Trump, perceived as close to Trump on this. Now, it is there are so many different ways to either get close to Trump or to put money directly into the Trump family's bank accounts," Haberman added. Meanwhile, the Trump Library is becoming another source of donations to Trump. The influencer culture, she said, is another matter because a lot of that surrounds the crypto industry, which Trump once said he didn't believe in. "But just the scale of moneymaking and the way in which you can get to the president and see a specific outcome is unlike anything that we have seen," Haberman said. "Which is not to say that other presidents have not had donors who you know, bring specific policy matters to them and so forth. But it's what you were saying about the gatekeeping piece."Swan said that he sees many conservatives in the Trump circle who are making more money than they've ever made while their credibility erodes. When it comes to people like Stephen Miller, Swan said that he's very good about disappearing when things are going badly. So, Trump naturally never associates Miller with positivity over negativity.
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