President Donald Trump is doing a lot less work now that he's in office.
Copies of Trump's private schedule reveal that he often starts his days with three hours of "Executive Time" from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. That includes watching TV, tweeting and making phone calls, according to Axios. The private schedules also revealed that Trump usually goes to his first official meeting of the day at 11 a.m., much later than either President George W. Bush, who started his day at 6:45 — or President Barack Obama, who would start between 9 and 10, after exercising.
A sample Trump day goes like this:
On Tuesday, Trump has his first meeting of the day with Chief of Staff John Kelly at 11 a.m. 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 3:45 p.m. meeting with the head of Presidential Personnel Johnny DeStefano — before ending his official day at 4:15 p.m.
Trump's days had been much longer near the start of his presidency, but the president began insisting that it start later in the day when he grew dissatisfied with it.
When campaigning, Trump questioned his opponent — Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — by saying that she didn't have the "stamina" to be president. Further, Trump's reliance on "executive time," which is likely spent catching up on the cable TV he was deprived of while doing real work, should raise even more questions about his mental fitness.
"Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff reported that Trump had trouble focusing for more than 10 minutes at a time.
Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his [Trump's] repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn't stop saying something.
Trump's light schedule is also problematic, considering that the federal government will experience a partial shutdown on Jan. 19 unless Trump and the Republican Party can find a way to work with the Democratic Party on key issues like immigration, according to Bloomberg. Despite this impending crisis, however, Trump's main scheduling item for Monday will be attending the College Football Playoff Championship between Alabama and Georgia in Atlanta.
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