One of the most closely guarded and worst-kept secrets of Donald Trump’s presidency is his extraordinary laziness. Despite efforts to project a manly ardor, the current leader of the free world spends most of his free time tweeting, calling friends, and watching Fox News. Of his 745 days in office, Trump has spent 222 days unwinding at Trump-branded properties and 168 days golfing. According to the testimony of numerous West Wing staffers, he struggles to focus in meetings, largely ignores intelligence briefings, and tunes out policy minutiae. Once, according to former White House aide Cliff Sims, Trump literally got up and wandered away while Paul Ryan was in the Oval Office attempting to explain the Republican health-care bill. While Ryan was still talking, Trump walked down the hall to his private dining room and turned on the TV.
We’ve known since January 2018 that White House staffers have an official designation for these unstructured periods on Trump’s private schedule: “Executive Time.” What we didn’t know is exactly how much of the president’s average day is spent un-presidenting.
In fact, “Executive Time” is far more than just a respite from the duties of the office. In perhaps the most remarkable White House leak this year, Axios on Sunday published about three months’ worth of Trump’s private daily schedules, dating back to the day after the midterm elections. They reveal that Trump has spent around 297 hours—or roughly 60 percent of his waking hours since the midterms—in “Executive Time.” For comparison, he’s only spent about 77 hours in meetings—less time than his travel (51 hours) and eating lunch (39 hours) combined.
Leaks are endemic to the Trump administration, but this one has especially rattled an already paranoid White House. “If most [leaks] are involuntary manslaughter,” Sims told Axios, “this was premeditated murder.” Morale inside the West Wing has reportedly taken a substantial hit. “What a disgraceful breach of trust to leak schedules,” tweeted Madeleine Westerhout, the White House’s director of Oval Office operations. “What these don’t show are the hundreds of calls and meetings @realDonaldTrump takes everyday.”
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-https://t.me/BestNewsHereIf Trump really is taking “hundreds” of undocumented calls and meetings every day, that’s another problem entirely, at least for those who care about transparency. But it’s hard to believe Westerhout’s denial, especially when the evidence of how Trump spends his time is so obvious online. From shortly after he wakes up until mid-morning, the president’s Twitter feed is often just responses to what he is watching on Fox News. Often, there is a consistent delay between what had just aired on Fox & Friends and a Trump tweet, suggesting that the president watches his programs on a DVR. In the evening, he returns to live-tweeting his favorite Fox hosts, or raging against an unflattering story on CNN.
In stark contrast, Trump’s predecessors’ schedules were fully booked. Bill Clinton was known to work constantly and at all hours, sometimes calling aides in the middle of the night. George W. Bush began his day at 5:15 A.M., and Barack Obama would stay up until 2 A.M. reading. Trump seems to believe that nobody has ever worked harder—“[Obama] just sat in here and watched basketball all day,” Sims recalls Trump saying in the Oval Office—but his protestations appear to be little more than projection.
It’s unclear whether Trump’s leaked post-midterm schedules reflect an increase or decrease in “Executive Time” over the past year, but it’s clearly information the White House didn’t want made public. The image of the 72-year-old president doddering around the White House with nothing to do for 60 percent of the time is hardly the image his campaign wants seen by the public before the next election. But this particular leak is unnerving for other reasons, too. It suggests, once again, that Trump’s inner circle is not loyal to him. It also would seem to confirm many of the other unflattering portraits of the president as incurious, disorganized, and distractible. ”Trump does review briefing materials, at least if you make it a point to have him do so,” one former senior White House official told Axios. “But only if you talk and guide him through it as he’s reading.”
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