ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has landed on a fresh nickname for President Donald Trump, and it rests entirely on how often the president has been caught dozing in public. A longtime Trump nemesis, the comedian used his monologue on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, to needle the 80-year-old president for appearing to drift off at the September 11 memorial ceremony, held on the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. His coinage: “Teddy Doze-evelt.”
“At the event, Teddy Doze-evelt got in a pretty good nap,” Kimmel said, telling viewers the White House had denied the president fell asleep. White House spokesman Davis Ingle told The Independent that Trump was “solemnly listening and remembering the victims and heroic first responders,” adding that “anyone ridiculously claiming the President was asleep is lying.”
“They said he was just ‘solemnly listening,'” Kimmel continued. “Which is the same kind of ‘solemnly listening’ Melania does when he tries to crawl in bed with her.”
A Montage of Public Catnaps
To back the bit, the host rolled a montage of clips, running close to a minute: his 2025 swearing-in, the Fourth of July fireworks, Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Memorial Day at Arlington, Pope Francis’s funeral, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s July funeral, a string of Cabinet meetings, and both this year’s and last year’s September 11 memorials. Kimmel then pushed the bit toward hypocrisy, noting Trump spent years mocking former President Joe Biden’s alertness with the “Sleepy Joe” label.
Trump has his own explanation: in January he denied being asleep at earlier Cabinet meetings, saying he shut his eyes because the sessions were “pretty boring.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who calls the president “Dozy Don,” jabbed at the Arlington appearance on social media. Kimmel offered one backhanded compliment — “Compared to Mitch McConnell, Trump has more energy than Kevin Hart” — cueing footage of the 84-year-old senator looking dazed returning to work in a wheelchair after months away.
The Kennedy Center Standoff
The next night, Kimmel turned to the Kennedy Center, where the board had voted a day earlier to close the main building for two years, with reopening projected for 2028, and floated renaming it for Melania Trump. Minutes before that vote, Judge Christopher Cooper ruled the president’s name couldn’t be added without congressional approval, blocking the phrase “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” from the facade. “Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper wrote.
Trump responded on Truth Social, saying he was closing the center “for safety reasons” and that reconstruction “cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name” — and “will not take place” if the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn an adverse ruling. A $100 million fundraising campaign has been reported separately from the $257 million Congress appropriated for the renovation itself.
Trump installed himself as chairman after returning to office in 2025 and put his name on the building; a federal judge barred him from keeping it there in May, and workers stripped the name from the facade. Pressed by a reporter in Charlotte on why the naming matters, Trump called the center a financial loser that had lost hundreds of millions, arguing it deserves recognition if his administration saves it — or will be demolished otherwise.
The same September 16 monologue aired a doctored, AI-altered version of Second Lady Usha Vance’s real diaper-bank awareness ad, with an edited Vance saying “no one wants to be around a messy baby or a poopy president.” Kimmel also mocked Trump’s pledge of $5,000 to every adult American if Republicans hold Congress: “He’s trying every trick to try to steal [the election] himself.”
Maria Shriver, JFK’s niece, wrote on X that week: “This statement from Trump blows my mind… Imagine spending your time and your days focused on this, as everyday Americans struggle with healthcare, gas prices, rent, and food.” She called him “small minded” and “narcissistic.”
Streisand Weighs In
Barbra Streisand, a 2008 Kennedy Center honoree, published a statement September 17 ridiculing Trump’s “unchecked ego.” “That is why what is happening to the Kennedy Center is so galling and painful to witness,” she wrote, adding that his effort to place his name alongside Kennedy’s met widespread opposition. Renamed for Kennedy after his 1963 assassination, the center opened to the public in 1971. Streisand closed by urging Americans to vote in November’s midterms.