What do we know about Donald Trump’s daily schedule at the White House? We have enough data from his three years and three months in office – the man is a buffoon who watches cable news all day and eats and tweets. He used to break up this schedule by golfing on the weekend, but during the pandemic, Trump has mostly stayed in the White House on weekends. Which led to a New York Times story about how Trump is sad, isolated, binge-eating and watching TV during the lockdown:

President Trump arrives in the Oval Office these days as late as noon, when he is usually in a sour mood after his morning marathon of television. He has been up in the White House master bedroom as early as 5 a.m. watching Fox News, then CNN, with a dollop of MSNBC thrown in for rage viewing. He makes calls with the TV on in the background, his routine since he first arrived at the White House. But now there are differences.

The president sees few allies no matter which channel he clicks. He is angry even with Fox, an old security blanket, for not portraying him as he would like to be seen. And he makes time to watch Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s briefings from New York, closely monitoring for a sporadic compliment or snipe.Confined to the White House, the president is isolated from the supporters, visitors, travel and golf that once entertained him, according to more than a dozen administration officials and close advisers who spoke about Mr. Trump’s strange new life. He is tested weekly, as is Vice President Mike Pence, for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The economy — Mr. Trump’s main case for re-election — has imploded. News coverage of his handling of the coronavirus has been overwhelmingly negative as Democrats have condemned him for a lack of empathy, honesty and competence in the face of a pandemic. Even Republicans have criticized Mr. Trump’s briefings as long-winded and his rough handling of critics as unproductive.

His own internal polling shows him sliding in some swing states, a major reason he declared a temporary halt to the issuance of green cards to those outside the United States. The executive order — watered down with loopholes after an uproar from business groups — was aimed at pleasing his political base, people close to him said, and was the kind of move Mr. Trump makes when things feel out of control. Friends who have spoken to him said he seemed unsettled and worried about losing the election.

[From The New York Times]

HE ARRIVES AT THE OVAL OFFICE AT NOON. I cannot get over that. George W. Bush and Barack Obama started their work days, in the Oval Office, between 8 am and 9 am, but they were often meeting with senior staff, making calls or getting briefed outside the Oval before then. In the evenings, Obama would go up to the residence to have dinner with his wife and children, then he would sit in his office in the residence for hours after his girls went to bed so he could catch up on reading – briefing papers, reports, scientific journals, law journals. Meanwhile, Dipsh-t Orange Man can’t put down the French fries as he mainlines cable news for six-plus hours every morning. Anyway, this Times report was so “damaging” to Trump’s reputation that he sent his chief of staff to personally refute it:

President Trump’s schedule is so packed amid the coronavirus crisis that he sometimes skips lunch, his aides told The Post — refuting a report that the commander-in-chief spends his days obsessing over TV coverage and eating fries. White House staffers said the president works around the clock and can make five dozen work-related calls a day during the pandemic.

“I can tell you that the biggest concern I have as a new chief of staff is making sure he gets some time to get a quick bite to eat,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told The Post. He said that Trump recently called him at 3:19 a.m. He wasn’t expecting the call and was asleep when the phone rang. “I can tell you that he will go back in and have a lunch just off the Oval Office and more times than not it is interrupted by several phone calls,” Meadows said. “If he gets more than 10 minutes of time in a given day I haven’t seen in the five weeks I’ve been here.”

A different White House official said that Trump, some days, doesn’t eat lunch. “There are times when lunch isn’t even a thought,” the official said. “A lot of time there’s either no time for lunch or there is 10 minutes for lunch.”

[From The NY Post]

Um…. he doesn’t need to eat lunch if he spends six hours every morning binge-eating fries and watching cable news. As for the 30-plus calls he makes every day… he’s calling political allies to threaten them or to get his ego massaged. That’s also not work. Also, he tweet-denied it with such specificity, you know it’s true:

….schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me. I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamburger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2020

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.