Over the last couple of years, Donald Trump’s character flaws have been on public display. He’s a pathological liar with delusional tendencies, who thinks he can get his way by bullying his opponents. There is also plenty of evidence that he is both racist and sexist. But there’s one other fundamental character flaw that I haven’t seen addressed directly: Trump is lazy.
A few months ago, Jonathan Swan wrote about the president’s schedule. It includes a lot of “executive time” that is set aside for watching television and tweeting from the White House residence. Generally, Trump’s work day doesn’t start until about 11 a.m. Here’s an example of how it goes from there:
On Tuesday, Trump has his first meeting of the day with Chief of Staff John Kelly at 11am. He then has “Executive Time” for an hour followed by an hour lunch in the private dining room. Then it’s another 1 hour 15 minutes of “Executive Time” followed by a 45 minute meeting with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Then another 15 minutes of “Executive Time” before Trump takes his last meeting of the day — a 3:45pm meeting with the head of Presidential Personnel Johnny DeStefano — before ending his official day at 4:15pm.
After reviewing the president’s actual schedule, Swan said that is pretty typical. So the president actually works less than five hours a day. But it doesn’t stop there. Most weeks, Trump leaves for golfing at one of his properties on Friday, which means that he usually has a four-day work week. Even without all of the “executive time” scattered in between other things, that means he generally works less than 20 hours a week. No wonder he doesn’t have time for those lengthy, detailed security briefings!
I suppose there is a way in which this is good news. If Trump worked full time, he might be busy creating even more havoc. But I’ll bet that if you checked in with previous presidents, they’d say that this job isn’t a part-time gig. Along with everything else that makes him unfit for office, Trump is simply lazy.
