As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump largely relied on a series of assertions that he repeated ad nauseam until they were perceived as fact. One such assertion was that Hillary Clinton, despite a career in public service spanning more than three decades, did not “have the stamina” to serve as president—“to be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina,” he insisted yet again during a September 2016 debate, implying that he, on the other hand, was practically bursting with the stuff.
But as questions reemerge about Trump’s fitness for office, a new report suggests that the president may not be quite as indefatigable as he has claimed. After reviewing copies of the president’s private schedule, Jonathan Swan of Axios reported Sunday that Trump’s official day typically doesn’t begin until 11 A.M. and ends relatively early, around 6 P.M., to accommodate “Executive Time.” (“Executive Time,” he explained, is allegedly time Trump spends in the Oval Office, but in reality the president is much more likely to retreat to his residence during those hours to watch TV and rage-tweet.) According to Swan, Trump “usually has a meeting or two during the day,” but spends the bulk of his time watching cable news or making phone calls. This week, the president’s private schedule reportedly goes something like this:
This is reportedly a shift from Trump’s schedule during the early days of his presidency, which “began earlier and ended later.” But Trump was unhappy with the long hours and pushed for a later start to his day. When asked for comment, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Axios that “the time in the morning is a mix of residence time and Oval Office time, but he always has calls with staff, Hill members, Cabinet members and foreign leaders during this time . . . The President is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen and puts in long hours and long days nearly every day of the week all year long.”
News of the president’s scant hours comes as the White House faces a new barrage of questions about Trump’s mental acuity—questions inspired by anecdotes in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, and stoked by the president’s own recent actions. (Though some have questioned the book’s accuracy, Wolff has repeatedly defended his reporting.) According to Wolff, “100 percent of the people around [Trump]—senior advisers, family members, every single one of them—questions his intelligence and fitness for office.” In a remarkable trio of tweets over the weekend, the president pushed back on these reports, assuring his followers that he is, in fact, “a very stable genius.” But with the White House dodging the question and Trump’s upcoming physical exam unlikely to provide answers, his daily activities may be the only window the American public has into what’s going on inside his head.
Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee informed lawmakers last month that she had drawn certain conclusions based on Trump’s patterns of behavior. “We feel that the rush of tweeting is an indication of his falling apart under stress,” she reportedly told the group, which consisted of several Democrats and one Republican. “Trump is going to get worse and will become uncontainable with the pressures of the presidency.”
