As everyone is aware by now, President Trump still spends much of his day on Twitter. His latest claims include defending his ability to be POTUS by declaring himself “like, really smart” and a “very stable genius.” He also pretended that Senior Advisor Stephen Miller owned Jake Tapper (who shut him down), and Trump postponed his “Fake News Awards” because, well, who knows. His level of Twitter activity waned for awhile, but it’s back with a vengeance (seven days per week), and Axios now reports that Trump’s presidential schedule has been coincidentally scaled back to a considerable degree.
Trump did hit the Oval Office early and hard in the months following his inauguration, but he now apparently doesn’t actually start working until 11:00 am. His actual schedule is reportedly different than the one that the public sees, and he’s blocked out large swaths of “executive time,” which he spends in his residence while tweeting, watching TV, and talking on the phone.
Axios points out that George W. Bush began his day at 6:45 am while Obama generally arrived at 9:00 am after a workout and worked late into the night. Whereas Trump is starting late (after enjoying “executive time” from 8:00 am until 11:00 am) and now concluding his duties before 5:00 pm on most days:
On Tuesday, Trump has his first meeting of the day with Chief of Staff John Kelly at 11am. He then has “Executive Time” for an hour followed by an hour lunch in the private dining room. Then it’s another 1 hour 15 minutes of “Executive Time” followed by a 45 minute meeting with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Then another 15 minutes of “Executive Time” before Trump takes his last meeting of the day — a 3:45pm meeting with the head of Presidential Personnel Johnny DeStefano — before ending his official day at 4:15pm.
Other days are fairly similar, unless the president is traveling, in which case the days run longer. On Wednesday this week, for example, the president meets at 11am for his intelligence briefing, then has “Executive Time” until a 2pm meeting with the Norwegian Prime Minister. His last official duty: a video recording with Hope Hicks at 4pm.
Uhhh, does it matter? Seriously, this news might not be as terrible as folks would believe. Would people rather Trump spend all of his time signing executive orders? He’s already rolled back much of the Obama legacy, so anything else would be sheer overkill.