Donald Trump has long since proven he’s like no other president in U.S. history, and that’s not a good thing. Now, presidential schedules leaked to Axios by a White House official show Trump has spent 60% of his scheduled time in “Executive Time,” a term invented especially for him by former chief of staff John Kelly.
Scrolling down the retyped presidential schedule published by Axios from Nov. 7, 2018 to Feb. 1, one can count how many times the term “Executive Time” appears. It’s mind-blowing. (View the schedule here.) And it shows, according to the news site, that Trump is the most unstructured and undisciplined president, probably ever.
Trump wakes up early, usually before 6 a.m. (he doesn’t sleep much), but doesn’t make it into the Oval Office for an intelligence briefing until about 11 or 11:30 a.m., the report said. Before that, he’s usually watching TV, making phone calls, and tweeting. The rest of the day, which isn’t long compared to his predecessors, Trump has meetings, makes more phone calls, has lunch, and then more executive time.
A White House official told Axios that Trump is “always up to something,” he just doesn’t follow a typical schedule like every other president has in the past.
Since the midterms, Trump has spent 297 hours in executive time. During the same period, he had 77 hours of scheduled meetings, policy planning, and strategy sessions. As the site noted, Trump often has off-the-books or impromptu meetings or calls with people during executive time when he doesn’t want advisers, reporters, or others to know, or when he impulsively decides to do so.
“Some days, Executive Time totally predominates,” Axios noted. “For instance, he had 1 hour of scheduled meetings on Jan. 18 (with acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin) and 7 hours of Executive Time.”
The report added: “The day after the midterms, Trump’s schedule had 30 minutes for a chief of staff meeting and more than 7 hours for Executive Time.”
At the end of the day, usually around 6 p.m. or before, Trump reportedly returns to his residence, where he watches more TV and tweets, among other things.
His days are longer when he travels, the report said.
It’s also worth noting that Trump spends an ungodly amount of time at his own private properties, particularly his golf clubs, usually on long weekends. This weekend, while Trump continues to claim the country faces a “crisis” at the southern border over immigration and a lack of a border “wall,” he visited the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, FL, where he played golf with Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods on Saturday.
On Sunday, Trump was at the Trump International Golf Club, about a half-hour away in West Palm Beach, FL. It was his 168th day at a Trump golf club as president. I don’t think that’s something a president would do if the country actually were in the midst of a crisis.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to Axios’ report by saying, “President Trump has a different leadership style than his predecessors and the results speak for themselves.”
She added: “While he spends much of his average day in scheduled meetings, events, and calls, there is time to allow for a more creative environment that has helped make him the most productive President in modern history.”