Donald Trump Reportedly Only Works About Three Hours On A Good Day, The Rest Is For Television And Twitter
Donald Trump’s days at the White House are filled with watching television and going on Twitter, with only about three hours each day dedicated to the duties of the president, a new report claims.
Earlier this year, Axios published a report claiming that the majority of Trump’s day is blocked off for something called “Executive Time,” which is unstructured time that Trump generally spends watching cable news and going onto Twitter. Politico has now published another report alleging that Trump spends even less time working than first thought, with his work generally not starting until late morning or even early afternoon — and being dominated by watching Fox News and going onto Twitter.
While some White House aides claimed that Trump was hard-working — one even described Trump as a “workaholic” — the president’s schedule implies that he rarely did anything at all in the morning.
“But the president’s official commitments last week began no earlier than 11 a.m. according to the schedules obtained by POLITICO, and on Tuesday — in the midst of a potential serial bomber and two weeks ahead of the midterm elections — they didn’t start until 1 p.m.”
Recently, the bulk of Trump’s time has been spent on traveling to and from political rallies, the report noted. He also carved out very little time for policy briefings, with Politico noting that he spent about two hours on it in total — for the entire week. Barack Obama, by contrast, spent between six and seven hours a day in detailed policy meetings, his former aides told Politico.
The report added that Chief of Staff John Kelly has tried to find a happy medium for Trump, who has allegedly complained when there is too much on his schedule. Allegations stemming from these recent reports claim that Trump has been known to watch television all day if there is nothing put on the schedule.
That still appears to be an issue, the report noted, as there are signs that cable television and Twitter take up a great deal of the president’s time in the White House.
“But dozens of the president’s trademark tweets, driven by TV news coverage, have also emerged during this down time,” the report noted. “He complained Friday morning during a three-hour block of Executive Time, for example, that the rash of attempted pipe bombings had driven coverage of the midterms out of the news.”
The report has drawn considerable interest, with Vanity Fair noting that the president’s alleged time habits mean that he only works about three hours a day. Other critics have seized on Trump’s apparent lack of interest in fulfilling the duties of his office.
"Trump's schedule on Tuesday featured nine hours of ’Executive Time’ and just over three hours of work. The president never begins his day before 11 a.m., and has hours of television watching built into his schedule."#ImpeachTrump #LazyTrump https://t.co/fdhzp6kwzU
— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) October 29, 2018
Donald Trump will likely be conducting even less business in the White House over the coming week. He has a very packed slate of campaign rallies to attend to over the course of the last week before midterm elections, as he tries to help Republicans stave off what polls suggest might be big wins for Democrats.
