President Donald Trump has a few go-to pastimes when he’s on land — golf and interior design among them — but when he’s up in the sky, he says he keeps himself busy in a very different way.
Speaking at the National Breakfast Prayer on Thursday, Feb. 5, Trump, 79, told the audience he avoids sleeping during long Air Force One trips — even flights that can stretch close to 20 hours.
“I don’t sleep on planes,” he said. “I don’t like sleeping on planes.”
So what does he do instead?
“I like looking out the window for missiles and enemies actually,” Trump added, prompting laughter from the crowd.
Trump has long talked publicly about getting little sleep. During his 2016 campaign, he described his routine in detail, saying, “You know, I’m not a big sleeper, I like three hours, four hours, I toss, I turn, I beep-de-beep, I want to find out what’s going on,” as HuffPost reported at the time.
In 2019, a White House official told CNN that traveling with the president is “like being held captive.”
Rather than resting, the official said Trump will “hold court for hours on end” and chat about topics unrelated to government work — including quizzing staffers about sports.
More recently, one Cabinet member shared a different approach to catching sleep on long flights: staying out of Trump’s line of sight.
Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, told New York magazine in an article published in January that he sometimes takes secret naps on board.
“There’s an office with two couches, and I usually want to sleep on one of those two couches,” Rubio, 54, told the publication.
“But what I do is I cocoon myself in a blanket,” he said. “I cover my head. I look like a mummy.”
Rubio explained the strategy is meant to avoid getting spotted when Trump starts making rounds mid-flight.
“And I do that because I know that at some point on the flight, [Trump is] going to emerge from the cabin and start prowling the hallways to see who is awake,” Rubio said.
Rubio added that he needs rest during long overseas trips, but Trump rarely seems to nap. He said he’d rather the president assume a staffer is sleeping than see his secretary of state doing it — because he doesn’t want Trump thinking, “Oh, this guy is weak.”
