Sleepy Joe (nickname)

Sleepy Joe is a nickname describing Joe Biden, the 46th president of the United States, coined and used by those who oppose his presidency, which has become an Internet meme. The nickname was originally coined in 2019 by Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump. It appeared after a series of videos where Biden appears to occasionally fall asleep during important meetings and television interviews.

History

On April 25, 2019, United States president Donald Trump tweeted the following: "Welcome to the race, Sleepy Joe". Biden responded by calling Trump a "clown". During the 2020 presidential election, including the final campaign debates, Trump generally mocked his opponent Biden repeatedly, calling him "Sleepy Joe".

In June 2020, reports surfaced that Trump had recently asked advisors whether he should stick with his current nickname for Biden, "Sleepy Joe", or try to come up with another nickname, such as "Swampy Joe" or "Creepy Joe". It has been noted that Trump is not convinced that "Sleepy Joe" is particularly "dangerous", and some of his advisers agree and urge him to stop using the nickname. In one tweet, Trump stated another pejorative nickname of Biden: "Corrupt Joe".

Gibril Sadeq Alagbari, an associate professor at Qassim University, reports that Trump has resorted to personal defamation by calling Biden "Sleepy Joe" in tweets. Trump has criticized Biden, saying he "has been in politics for 40 years and done nothing", describing him as "politically weak" and claiming Trump has done more in 3.5 years for black people than Biden did in 43 years. Reinforcing his war against "radical-left democrats", Trump seized on popular calls to "protect the police" and falsely attributed them to "Sleepy Joe". He also claimed that Biden "doesn't know where he is or what he's doing", "he's asleep", and that Biden held a rally that "hardly anyone showed up for".

See also

• List of nicknames used by Donald Trump

References

Further reading

• Johnson, Tyler (June 15, 2021). "Sleepy Joe? Recalling and Considering Donald Trump's Strategic Use of Nicknames". Journal of Political Marketing. 20 (3–4): 302–316. doi:10.1080/15377857.2021.1939572. S2CID 236232668.
• Maly, Ico (2020). "The Army for Trump and Trump's war against Sleepy Joe". Diggit Magazine. Tilburg University.
• Bond, Gary D.; Speller, Lassiter F.; Cockrell, Lauren L.; Webb, Katelynn G.; Sievers, Jaci L. (May 28, 2022). "'Sleepy Joe' and 'Donald, King of Whoppers': Reality Monitoring and Verbal Deception in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election Debates". Psychological Reports. 126 (6). SAGE Publishing: 3090–3103. doi:10.1177/00332941221105212. PMID 35634896. S2CID 249170739.
• Alaghbary, Gibreel Sadeq (December 30, 2020). "Looting leads to shooting: A pragma-dialectical analysis of President Trump's argumentative discourse on Floyd's death". Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies. 16 (4). JLLS: 1854–1868. doi:10.17263/jlls.851011. ISSN 1305-578X. S2CID 234374358.
• Anggraini, Rini; Sawirman, Sawirman; Marnita, Rina (January 2021). "The Structures of Trump's Political Discourse". Indonesian Journal of Language Teaching and Linguistics. 6 (1): 55–72. doi:10.30957/ijoltl.v6i1.650 (inactive 31 January 2024).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2024 (link)