Trump must still be reeling from the recent report in Axios, which suggested that he spends about sixty percent of his day in "executive time," and spends his mornings rage tweeting and watching Fox "news," because they sent acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney out this Sunday to pretend he's actually working during that time and "prepping for meetings."
Sure he is Mick:
CHUCK TODD: You know about this Jeff Bezos story. He has implicated the National Enquirer and its owner, Mr. David Pecker, in some form of a blackmail or extortion scheme. Can you say definitively that the president of the United States knows nothing about David Pecker's reporting on Jeff Bezos?
MICK MULVANEY: You and I were talking about before the show about how I can function in my job and you struggle with your function because I can compartmentalize and you can't.
CHUCK TODD: Right.
MICK MULVANEY: I have not had one second's worth of conversation with the president of the United States about the Jeff Bezos situation.
CHUCK TODD: Not a single at all?
MICK MULVANEY: We run the government, Chuck --
CHUCK TODD: I understand that.
MICK MULVANEY: We make sure that --
CHUCK TODD: He spends, well -- I guess this leads me to my question. There's a report that the president spends a majority of his time in executive time. So could it be that this is why you're not aware of this? That he's off tweeting away, and gossiping, and not working?
MICK MULVANEY: No, I read that. And I get those schedules. In fact, that's probably the closest thing to a public schedule that we put out. It's not very sensitive. I think 400 people get that schedule. So it wasn't that valuable of information.
CHUCK TODD: Then why is there a leak hunt?
MICK MULVANEY: But, it’s very -- well, come back to answer your question about executive time. Because, you and I have had this conversation I think before, which is this show lasts an hour. Does that mean you only work for an hour a week? No, there's a lot of stuff that goes on in order to make this happen. That executive time is on there to allow the president to prep for the next meeting, to debrief from the previous meeting. The phone calls start at 6:30 in the morning, and they go until 11:00 at night. So I can assure you that the gentleman is working more than what's on that calendar.
All you have to do is follow Trump's Twitter feed if you want to know how he's spending most of his time during the day. If you believe either of these fables, about Bezos, or his "executive time," I've got a degree from Trump University to sell you.
