At 10:46 p.m., Financial Times journalist Edward Luce tweeted from the convention, “People starting to leave. Loud chattering on fringes of the arena. Trump is boring the audience.” A few minutes later, from a “sea of [Trump] diehards” just some paces from the stage, Atlantic reporter Tim Alberta posted, “some are getting restless. Checking phones, stealing glances at the teleprompter, whispering about when it will be over.”
One X user observed, “People are visibly falling asleep,” clipping a wide shot of the audience from CBS News’s broadcast, in which more than one attendee can be seen being lulled to sleep—slumped in their chairs, with heads bowed and eyelids heavy—as Trump droned on.
People are visibly falling asleep pic.twitter.com/onD8vdCshZ
— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) July 19, 2024
As the speech finally came to a close and balloons fell on the convention, a rendition of the operatic aria “Nessun dorma” rang through the hall. The song’s title and opening lines are Italian for “Nobody shall sleep,” but, apparently, some shall.