How President Trump Spent His First Month In Office, By The Numbers

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From the moment Donald Trump was sworn in as president on the steps of the Capitol until noon Monday, precisely one month had passed. A total of 744 hours.

Here’s how he spent each one.

Let’s start at the top.

Trump’s time in D.C.

The president spent a little under three-quarters of his time in and around Washington during his first month in office. A little less than half of that was time during which he was officially working – as measured by the time between when the media was told to show up in the morning (known as “call time”) until the media was dismissed in the evening (known as “the lid”). This is an imprecise measure of when a president is working, of course; he might take meetings after hours or review documents that are pertinent to his job. That difference is impossible to measure, though, so, in our calculus it blends together with obvious downtime, like when the president is asleep. Or when he’s watching TV, which is also impossible to measure.

Much of Trump’s work time fell into a few basic categories. The estimates below are based on pool reports. Most events were assumed to be an hour, unless the schedule made obvious that the length was shorter or longer. (Numbers below and on the accompanying chart are rounded.)

–Intelligence briefings: 6 hours

–News conferences: 4 hours

–Signing bills and executive orders: 6 hours

–Phone calls and meetings with foreign leaders: 21 hours

–Listening sessions with various groups: 14 hours

Trump spent 182 hours between call time and the lid with other events that were listed on his public calendar, though not every hour was accounted for during that time. Not captured in those categories are a few special events: the inauguration, the National Prayer Breakfast and the two hours his family spent watching “Finding Dory” in the White House theater. (His press secretary says that Trump didn’t join in.)

Trump’s time on Twitter

The president, as you may be aware, likes to use Twitter. How much time he spends on it can be hard to determine, so here’s how I arrived at my estimate.

On not infrequent occasion, one of two things will happen: Trump will tweet a string of thoughts over multiple tweets or Trump will delete and reissue a thought on Twitter. To figure out how long it took him to draft a tweet, I averaged how much time usually elapsed between those tweets since Jan. 20. On average? Eight minutes and 20 seconds.

Using data from the Trump Twitter Archive, I then looked at each tweet sent from an Android device – the best indicator when it’s Trump himself tweeting – and calculated how much time in total was spent on those tweets, assuming each was given an eight-minute window. Since most of his Android tweets come outside of normal work hours, his tweets were counted in the “other time” period.

In short: Trump spent an estimated 13 hours on tweets in D.C. and another five hours while in Florida. In total, Trump sent 128 tweets from an Android device, of 199 total since he was inaugurated. Some of those other tweets were clearly from him, like the one below, but we only included Android tweets.

Trump tweeted: My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

Trump’s time in Florida

About a quarter of Trump’s time since he took office has been spent in Florida – mostly at his Mar-a-Lago resort but also on the golf course.

Trump’s team is keenly aware that the president spending a lot of time on the golf course is a bit questionable. That’s not because presidents don’t deserve downtime, mind you – it’s just that Trump was an outspoken critic of Barack Obama’s time on the golf course. “I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf,” he said last August.

But he’s found time. Trump’s hit the links at least six times since he took office. On at least five of those occasions, he played a full 18 holes.

On Sunday, the administration claimed that he’d only played “a few holes” both days this weekend. That was revealed as untrue thanks to a blog post indicating that Trump was joined by professional golfer Rory McIlroy for 18 holes two days ago. (The administration’s response to the truth coming out? “He intended to play a few holes and decided to play longer.” The White House spokesman then added, “He also had a full day of meetings.”)

In addition to McIlroy, Trump was joined on Sunday by Rich Levine, a friend of Trump’s, and Nick Mullen from International Sports Management. As a general rule, we don’t know who joined Trump on the links. He played 18 holes on Feb. 4 and 5 – based on the fact that Trump spent about four and a half hours at the club – but it’s not clear who joined him. He played Feb. 11 and 12, the former with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and golf pro Ernie Els. On both of those days, he played 18 holes. We don’t know how much he played Saturday (we took the administration at its word that it was a “few holes,” despite that not being true for the next day) or who joined him.

Most of the other work that Trump has done in Florida has been meetings or calls with foreign leaders.

Trump’s time everywhere else

Trump’s spent about 16 hours traveling on Air Force One and Marine One, the presidential helicopter. That’s mostly to and from Palm Beach, where Mar-a-Lago is. But it includes trips to Philadelphia (for a Republican retreat); Dover, Delaware, (to attend the homecoming of a soldier killed in action); and South Carolina (to tour a Boeing factory). Trump spent about 10 hours everywhere except D.C. and Palm Beach.

As someone on Twitter noted, Trump’s a month into his four-year term – the equivalent of one minute having expired in an NBA game. Still plenty of time for these stats to shift.

(c) 2017, The Washington Post · Philip Bump 

{Matzav.com}


4 COMMENTS

  1. it figures that this (critical) article should be written by our “friends” at washington prust. just what i predicted–these guys are going to examine with a magnifying glass every one of trumps moves and if they find anything remotely critical they’re going to run with it and blow it way out of proportion. boy, did obama get away with murder.

  2. in answer to comment 2…sure “they are entitled to it”….now see comment 3….”as long as they’re honest”…and as long as they don’t grossly exaggerate stories for the sole purpose of demeaning the subject in the article; in this case Trump.

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