President Trump says he’s ‘very active.’ His schedu

The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washing Post website May 12, 2017:

President Trump woke up angry on Friday.

By 9:30 a.m. Eastern, he’d already tweeted seven times, railing against the media and the investigation into possible ties between his campaign and Russian interests. In one tweet, he defended his deputy press secretary for having offered an explanation for the firing of FBI director James B. Comey that Trump himself later contradicted.

Trump went on to say that, since the media held his staff to the ridiculous standard of not providing false information, perhaps he would cancel press briefings entirely. That garnered a good deal of attention.

But we’d like to focus on one part of the tweet above: The part where he says he’s very active.

He isn’t. Or, at least, if he is, it’s not on his calendar.

We went back and looked at the daily schedule provided by the White House, a running and frequently-updated list of the meetings that Trump has planned on any given day. On the weekends, his schedule is generally pretty light, which isn’t unusual. What’s unusual is that, of late, Trump’s schedule has been awfully light during the week, too.

Here’s what’s been on his calendar since two months ago today, Sunday, March 12.

We broke it out into the type of event.

• Open media events, meaning that the press could observe and cover what was happening.
• Pool sprays, meaning that press photographers would have a chance to take pictures (common for things like visits from foreign dignitaries)
• Closed events, meaning that the media isn’t given an opportunity to cover what’s happening. This is common for private discussions with staff or diplomats, so that the media knows what’s happening even if it’s better to keep the details private.

We also added those days when he likely ducks out to play golf; more on that below.

So far this week, Trump has had only nine events on his public calendar — all of them closed. If we compare week-to-week, that shift in his activity is obvious.

The obvious question that arises is: What’s Trump doing the rest of the time?

If he’s very active, what’s he active doing? Who’s he meeting with? What are they discussing? We are left to make one of two assumptions: Trump either is hiding a lot of his presidential business from the public, or he is not doing much at all.

We know that he does have a lot of meetings that we only learn about after the fact. His dinner with former FBI director James B. Comey on Jan. 27 wasn’t on his schedule. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani told reporters this week that he was in D.C. to meet with Trump; that wasn’t on the calendar either. And our analysis of when Trump golfs — a sore spot for the president, given how often he complained about Barack Obama’s frequent golfing — relies on estimates, since the White House is often opaque about whether he’s played 18 holes.

Reporting also indicates that Trump requires a lot of down time. A New York Times story from earlier this month noted that chief of staff Reince Priebus had learned to build a lot of “slack” time into Trump’s day, unstructured time when the president could hold spontaneous meetings with whomever he wished. Those periods may be very active, but it’s not clear how much work gets done.

What’s particularly notable is how this week stands apart from other recent weeks. Trump’s declaring himself very active at a moment when there’s no public evidence that that’s the case. He’s got less going on now than he himself had two months ago.

If he’s very active, what’s he doing? And if he’s not — well, same question.

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