Report: Trump Clocks in About Three Hours of Work on a Good Day

Back in January, Axios obtained an inside look at Donald Trump’s schedule, revealing that the president of the United States was doing far less work than in the early days of his term, and demanding large blocks of “Executive Time,” a euphemism created by Chief of Staff John Kelly so that White House aides didn’t have to write dick around on Twitter and shout at the TV on official documents. Now, nine months later, Politico has revisited Trump’s schedule, and it turns out that the most powerful person in the world is somehow doing even less work every day than he was earlier this year. Moreover, when Trump does deign to do his job, it’s mostly in the form of signing ceremonies and shouting at aides to craft policy around something he saw on Fox & Friends.

Last Tuesday’s schedule, for instance, reportedly included a whopping nine hours of “Executive Time,” or triple the time that was allotted for actual work. Trump’s first commitment of the day came at 1 P.M., and while he had a 30-minute call with C.E.O.s here and a quick briefing and dinner with senior military leaders there, the rest of the day consisted of doing whatever the hell he wanted, sometimes for stretches as long as two hours and 45 minutes. (What he wanted, apparently, was to trash Puerto Rico’s elected officials and tweet clips of himself fear-mongering about immigrants.) And while Tuesday included more free time than any other day that week, it was in no way an outlier:

A bulk of the president’s time last week was spent traveling to and from political rallies and campaigning on behalf of Republican candidates ahead of next Tuesday’s midterm elections. On Wednesday, which began with an 11:30 A.M. meeting with John Kelly, Trump delivered brief remarks on the opioid crisis and sat for a media interview before departing for an evening rally in Wisconsin. The rest of his day, according to his schedule, was open.

Last week’s schedules are remarkably light on policy discussions. The president spent a little more than two hours of his week in policy briefings, according to the schedules, and he was scheduled to receive the President’s Daily Brief on just two of the five days reviewed.

Trump’s supporters like to claim that it’s unfair to slag on the guy for doing hardly any work at all because apparently sometimes, during his hours of playtime, he’ll hustle everyone into his office to discuss some inane thought that popped into his head. “He might read something in the paper and immediately you’d get an impromptu meeting on trade,” a person familiar with the president’s scheduling told Politico. “It’s just more impromptu than like a month in advance you have a policy time set that you’re going to work up to.” Mostly, though, it‘s devoted to media bashing from the comfort of his bed and complaining that bombs sent to prominent Democrats will hurt Republicans in the midterm elections.

. . . dozens of the president’s trademark tweets, driven by TV news coverage, have also emerged during this downtime. 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.

“Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this ‘Bomb’ stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics,” Trump wrote. “Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!”

During another block of unstructured time last week, he complained about a story published by The New York Times, revealing that Chinese and Russian intelligence agents routinely eavesdropped on his unsecured cell phone calls, arguing that the “long and boring article” was “so incorrect I do not have the time here to correct it . . . Story is soooo wrong!”

Of course, the fact that one of the worst presidents in history devotes so little time to actually doing his job might not necessarily be such a bad thing, but it’s still a marvel to behold.

More Great Stories from Vanity Fair

— Uber wants to be the next Amazon, but it could end up the next Yahoo

— Meet the fake Saudi prince with a 30-year plan

— We talked to the most elite counterterrorism unit in the world

— Why Michael Bloomberg’s massive donations might not actually help him be president

Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.