Thursday, February 7, 2019

“I'm not going to have time to go play golf,” Trump said on the 2016 presidential campaign trail. In 2015 he insisted that he “would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done.” “I would not be a president who took vacations,” he said. “I would not be a president that takes time off.”

The Guardian, today:

Axios reported: “The president sometimes has meetings during executive time that he doesn’t want most West Wing staff to know about for fear of leaks. And his mornings sometimes include calls with heads of state, political meetings and meetings with counsel in the residence, which aren’t captured on these schedules.”

The calls and meetings are understood to include the Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, longtime friends such as his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the New York businessman Richard LeFrak, the conservative media entrepreneur Chris Ruddy and the former bodyguard Keith Schiller, and members of Congress including senator Lindsey Graham and the US representative Mark Meadows. He also phones journalists at the New York Times and elsewhere to complain about their coverage.

Yet the interactions do not appear on the daily schedules. Chris Whipple, the author of The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, said: “It tells you these calls have nothing to do with governing. He’s just clowning around, talking to his pals, tweeting and watching TV. If the calls had any governmental purpose, it would be on the schedule.”

Below, Page 1 of President Ford's schedule, today in 1975. It goes on for five pages, with appendices.


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