President Donald Trump has long been known as not exactly the most hardworking guy, but a leak of his past few months of schedules in recent days put that perception in a whole new light. According to Axios, White House officials are scrambling and freaking out over the document dump, which reveals that over 60 percent of Trump’s accounted for time in the last three months has been allotted to “executive time” — in other words, breaks. In those breaks, he engages in some of his most infamous activities, like firing off incendiary public statement after public statement via Twitter and binge-watching Fox News.
Former White House official Cliff Sims — who’s responsible for the high-profile exposé Team of Vipers currently making the rounds — shared:
‘There are leaks, and then there are leaks. If most are involuntary manslaughter, this was premeditated murder. People inside are genuinely scared.’
Sims added elsewhere that the presidential schedules are emailed out to staffers daily — and the amount of effort required to assemble months of them must indicate how committed the person responsible is to the cause.
Axios compares the ensuing tumult to what ensued following the publication of a piece in The New York Times penned by an anonymous administration official describing themselves as part of a quiet resistance inside the Trump administration. Although they indicated high-level access, there’s never been any apparent headway made in determining who actually wrote the article — but that’s not for a lack of trying.
The Trump administration has repeatedly lost its cool over leaks. Staffers have been pressured into technology surveillance to the point of men patrolling the West Wing with devices meant to detect phones that aren’t government-issued. If such a device is discovered, they start asking around — and if no one gives it up, they reportedly start looking for it.
President Trump personally has freaked out numerous times, suggesting that leakers including even former FBI Director James Comey should be criminally prosecuted. For the record, Comey simply shared his own personally created memos — not some kind of top secret code.
Ironically however, none of the Trump administration efforts against leaks have stopped the leaks from coming.
This time around in the case of the presidential schedules, they reinforce already publicly apparent aspects of the president’s behavior, despite pushback from the White House. Director of Oval Office operations Madeleine Westerhout asserted that the schedule leak was a “disgraceful breach of trust” that doesn’t take into account “hundreds of calls and meetings Donald Trump takes every day.”
Still, someone who’s spent what’s approaching one-fourth of their presidency at golf properties branded with their own name like Trump has doesn’t exactly seem like the most hardworking commander-in-chief.
Trump continues to face challenges demanding his attention like security threats from around the world, the ballooning federal deficit and debt, and so on.
He just keeps tweeting, although ironically he didn’t do so before about 10 A.M. on Monday on the East Coast as he always does.
Still, just the day before the Axios report on the schedule fallout dropped, he made sure the nation knew his take on Tiger Woods’ golfing and “criminals of all dimensions” who are “marching” towards the southern border — whatever that means.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
