The White House says it allows for a more “creative environment.”
Over the weekend, we got a closer look at President Donald Trump’s “executive time” thanks to a leak of his schedule from the White House.
Alexi McCammond and Jonathan Swan from Axios published three months of the president’s private schedule on Sunday after someone from within Trump’s orbit leaked the information to McCammond. The information shows that Trump has spent 297 hours — or 60 percent of his scheduled time — since around the midterms in so-called “executive time,” hours of the day when there’s nothing specific for him to do.
That doesn’t mean he’s not doing anything — a White House official told Axios that Trump is always calling and talking to people and “always up to something; it’s just not what you would consider typical structure.” The schedules published don’t list all of Trump’s meetings and activities.
The schedule is a big deal not just because of what it reveals of Trump’s activities but also, and perhaps even more importantly, because the leak even happened in the first place. It is a notable act of subversion for someone that close to the president’s orbit to send to a reporter three months of what is supposed to be private information.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman noted as much on Twitter. “A White House aide is weaponizing his schedules, which says a lot about how people in the White House feel about the man they work for,” she wrote.
A White House aide is weaponizing his schedules, which says a lot about how people in the White House feel about the man they work for https://t.co/76K7XCzwPD
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 3, 2019
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened: In 2017, transcripts of Trump’s phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia that painted the president in an unflattering light were sent to the Washington Post. Trump’s White House has been notoriously leaky.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders acknowledged in a statement to Axios that the president has a “different leadership style than his predecessors and the results speak for themselves.” She said that he spends much of his day in meetings, events, and calls but also has time to “allow for a more creative environment that has helped make him the most productive President in modern history.” She then laid out a laundry list of Trump’s accomplishments.
This kind of stuff clearly bothers Trump
The lack of structure in Trump’s schedule has been a topic of discussion on and off throughout his presidency.
In October, Politico reported that Trump was spending multiple hours a day in executive time and was beginning his day increasingly later in the morning. More than a year ago, Axios reported that Trump spent around 11 am to 6 pm in the Oval Office each day and generally passed his morning “executive time” from about 8 to 11 am watching television and tweeting. And in December 2017, the Times laid out Trump’s early-morning habits of Fox & Friends, Morning Joe, and Twitter.
Trump, clearly irked by questions about his productivity, has pushed back on such reports.
He told reporters on Air Force One in December 2017 that he does not watch television. “I know they like to say — people that don’t know me — they like to say I watch television. People with fake sources — you know, fake reporters, fake sources. But I don’t get to watch much television, primarily because of documents. I’m reading documents a lot,” he said.
Trump also brought up the issue in an interview with the Times last week when Haberman pointed out that he often calls accurate stories inaccurate.
“For instance, you cover me and you know, I get up early in the morning and I turn on television. And I do. But I don’t turn it on very much because I really read the papers much more than I watch the television, okay?” Trump said. He told Haberman he wishes she would call him and “I would tell you exactly what the routine is.”
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Breaking News: Someone in the White House leaked Trump’s private schedule. There’s a lot of executive time on it. - News Paper
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