Donald Trump has once again claimed he is the hardest working president in US history after further White House leaks suggest he spends about half of his days in unstructured “executive time”.
According to copies of his personal schedule allegedly obtained by Axios last week, 60% of his time is spent in his residence watching TV, tweeting, making phone calls to advisors and holding impromptu meetings.
A further leak detailing three days of this month shows that he continued to enjoy his executive time even after he drew widespread criticism when the original story broke.
Responding to the latest leaks on Monday morning, possibly during executive time, Trump tweeted: “No president ever worked harder than me (cleaning up the mess I inherited)!”
Trump’s love of spending his weekends in Florida playing golf are well-documented and are far more frequent and at far higher cost to the US taxpayer than previous presidents (156 times at a cost of $87 million by one estimate).
The White House is pretty peeved by the leaks of the president’s schedule and have launched a hunt for the person responsible, with acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney saying their identity should be known this week.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has defended Trump’s unstructured time, saying it has provided a “creative environment” for Trump to help “make him the most productive president in modern history”.
On Sunday Trump doubled down on this line of thinking, tweeting that it “should have been reported as a positive, not a negative”.
He also suggested that when the term “executive time” appears on his schedule, it means he is “generally working, not relaxing”.