Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross Continuously Falls Asleep During Meetings

A new report highlights the 81-year-old Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s propensity to doze off or fully fall asleep during important commerce meetings. Politico says that agency’s staff schedules meetings at times they think he will be more awake for. 

One of the sources cited stated the agency officials are worried that Ross’s lack of “stamina” and involvement in the agency is causing low morale among the departments members.

A former outside adviser with an understanding of the inner workings of the Commerce Department said that “they try not to put him in a position where that could happen so they’re very careful and conscious about how they schedule certain meetings” the unnamed source also said “there’s a small window where he’s able to focus and pay attention and not fall asleep.” The sources also told the the website that Ross is usually at the White House cozying up to the president instead of being at the department. The sources say workers see him as “irrelevant” and that “there’s not a lot of confidence in the secretary.” They feel that under Ross the department is a “disaster.”

However, a spokesperson from the Commerce Department rejected the report claiming “this article bears no relationship to reality” and that “Secretary Ross is a tireless worker who is the sole decision maker at the Department.” The spokesperson went on to say that Ross’s schedule includes huge amounts of travel and long 12-hour days.

Ross has recently come under fire for his push to try to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Democrats feared that this question would be used by the Trump administration to gather information that could be used against undocumented migrants staying in the United States. The Idea was rejected by the Supreme Court, causing Trump to also give up the question. The trouble of the question annoyed the President, who has also been upset with Ross’s leadership of the Census Bureau.