US5 min(s) read
Published 11:00 02 May 2026 GMT
Donald Trump's late-night Truth Social habits have become so well-documented at this point that they've sparked their own side industry of analysis.
And one term in particular keeps cropping up: 'sundowning.'
Critics, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, have used the word to suggest the 79-year-old president's after-dark posting sprees might point to something more concerning than a man who simply doesn't like sleeping.
But what does the term actually mean, and is it being used fairly?
To understand why people are reaching for the word in the first place, it helps to look at the behavior they're talking about.
In recent months, Trump has fired off rapid-fire bursts of Truth Social posts late at night and into the early hours.
According to The Daily Beast, one recent spree saw him share 48 posts in 36 minutes, before resuming again at 6:00am.
Another night, he posted 19 times in 12 hours, including 10 times in a 20-minute window around midnight.
The posts have ranged from attacks on political rivals like Newsom, Pope Leo, and NATO, to sharing AI-generated images of himself, to easily debunked claims about domestic policy.
Trump himself has long described himself as a 'late-night person,' telling Sean Hannity back in 2023 that he sleeps 'not much.'
Vice President JD Vance told Fox News in September that Trump sometimes calls him at 12.30am, then again at 6:00am 'about a totally different topic.'
.jpg_KxNZRz?tr=cr-0.0.1024.683,f-webp,q-70,w-1024)
'Sundowning,' also known as 'sundown syndrome,' is a real and well-documented medical phenomenon, not a casual insult.
According to the Alzheimer's Association, it refers to a cluster of symptoms that people living with Alzheimer's or dementia can experience from late afternoon through the evening and into the night. It is not a disease in itself, but a set of behaviours associated with dementia.
Common symptoms include:
The Alzheimer's Association says up to two in three people with Alzheimer's experience sundowning at some point during their illness. It's most common in the middle and later stages.
The exact cause isn't fully understood, but doctors think a few things may be at play.
One leading theory is that disrupted circadian rhythms (the body's internal sleep-wake clock) play a major role.
Fading light, low lighting, mental and physical exhaustion from a long day, and confusion from shadows can all act as triggers.
The Cleveland Clinic also lists sleep deprivation as a factor that can make sundowning significantly worse, which becomes a vicious cycle: the worse the sleep, the worse the symptoms, the worse the sleep again.
This is where things get more complicated, and where it's worth being careful.
Trump has not been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's.
His White House physician, Dr Sean Barbabella, declared him in 'excellent health' at his last reported physical, and the president has repeatedly claimed perfect scores on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a screening tool designed to detect early signs of cognitive impairment.
The White House has firmly rejected suggestions that anything is amiss.
Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller previously said Trump 'can work harder, has a better memory, more stamina and energy than a normal mortal,' and suggested the headline should be 'The Superhuman President.'
Crucially, doctors say sundowning is not something you can diagnose from a single behaviour or even a single evening.
In a 2020 interview on the Cleveland Clinic's YouTube channel, geriatric psychiatrist Dr Ryan Hall explained that sundowning 'is something caregivers notice over time, not something you diagnose from a single behaviour or a single evening.'
In other words, late-night posting on its own, even a lot of it, is not enough to point to anything medical.
The reason the word keeps surfacing is largely political.
Newsom's press office has openly used 'sundowning' to mock Trump's late-night sprees.
After one recent spree, the office quipped 'So… about last night,' directly linking the timing of Trump's posts to symptoms associated with cognitive decline.
That came against a wider backdrop.
Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin recently called for the White House physician to perform a comprehensive cognitive assessment on Trump, citing what he called 'increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged, and threatening' public statements.
Some MAGA-aligned commentators have also publicly questioned the president's recent behaviour.
But for now, the suggestion that Trump is 'sundowning' remains a political talking point, not a medical finding.
As one IBTimes analysis put it, applying a clinical framework like sundowning to anyone requires evidence well beyond timestamps on social media posts.
So could late-night Truth Social storms be a sign of something? Possibly.
Could they just be the habits of a 79-year-old who has always preferred working in the small hours and has never been shy about saying exactly what's on his mind? Also possibly.
Without sworn medical testimony or a documented diagnosis, the answer, for now, is that nobody outside the president's medical team really knows.
Whether voters find that reassuring is, as ever, another question entirely.
