Sleepy Joe is a nickname describing Joe Biden, the 46th president of the United States, coined and used by those who opposed his presidency, which became an Internet meme. The nickname was originally coined in 2019 by Biden's predecessor and successor, Donald Trump. It appeared after the publication of a number of media memes, where Biden allegedly falls asleep during a television interview. The nickname hints at Biden's possible physical and mental inability to perform the duties of president.

On April 25, 2019, United States president Donald Trump tweeted, "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".

During the 2020 presidential election, including the final election debate, Trump repeatedly trolled his opponent Joe Biden, calling him "Sleepy Joe".^{[citation needed]} Thus, in one of his pre-election speeches in Wisconsin on November 2, 2020, Trump referred to his rival Joe Biden as "Sleepy Joe", "Sleepy Biden", demonstrating his failure as a political leader.

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 agreed and urged him to stop using the nickname. In one tweet, Trump stated another nickname for Biden: "Corrupt Joe".

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".

According to Google Trends, the nickname "Sleepy Joe" was quite popular in 2020-2021.

The nickname "Sleepy Joe" is a pejorative anthroponym. It is used by Trump to create a "political boundary of antagonism against Biden". The adjective "sleepy" also demonstrates the same process of modifying the noun "Joe Biden" in a political, rather than semantic or pragmatic, way. The phrase "Sleepy Joe Biden" does not refer to Joe Biden still being sleepy due to lack of sleep; rather, it is a core structure of antagonism that creates the meaning "Joe Biden is unworthy of being President of the United States". This form of constructing political and antagonistic meaning is common to various core structures of antagonism in Trump's political discourse. In his antagonistic discourse, Trump demonstrates a process of cognitive control.

In The Lancet magazine, academics and doctors drew attention to the fact that the nicknames "Sleepy Joe" and "crazy" demonstrate how mental health problems can be misinterpreted and used as a tool; this is especially true in the Americas, where stigmatization of such diseases exists.