Trump's Day: Unless, of course, it's "fake news"

The Times has a play book of The Most Notable Loser's average day.

Around 5:30 each morning, President Trump wakes and tunes into the television in the White House’s master bedroom. He flips to CNN for news, moves to “Fox & Friends” for comfort and messaging ideas, and sometimes watches MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” because, friends suspect, it fires him up for the day.

  NYT

If he watches "Morning Joe" it's in hopes he can find something to snark about Joe Scarborough on Twitter.

During meetings, the 60-inch screen mounted in the dining room may be muted, but Mr. Trump keeps an eye on scrolling headlines. What he misses he checks out later on what he calls his “Super TiVo,” a state-of-the-art system that records cable news.

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People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted, marinating in the no-holds-barred wars of cable news and eager to fire back.

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Sometimes he tweets while propped on his pillow, according to aides.

Do they have to go into his bedroom?

Obviously, we're talking a separate bedroom from Melania, and who could blame her?

And - four hours? Sounds like he watches it all day long.

Watching cable, he shares thoughts with anyone in the room, even the household staff he summons via a button for lunch or one of the dozen Diet Cokes he consumes each day.

Jesus. No wonder he's fat and hyper.

On his recent trip to Asia, the president was told of a list of 51 fact-checking questions for this article, including one about his prodigious television watching habits. Instead of responding through an aide, he delivered a broadside on his viewing habits to befuddled reporters from other outlets on Air Force One heading to Vietnam.

“I do not watch much television,” he insisted. “I know they like to say — people that don’t know me — they like to say I watch television. People with fake sources — you know, fake reporters, fake sources. But I don’t get to watch much television, primarily because of documents. I’m reading documents a lot.”

Hilarious.

Other times he tweets from the den next door, watching another television. Less frequently, he makes his way up the hall to the ornate Treaty Room, sometimes dressed for the day, sometimes still in night clothes, where he begins his official and unofficial calls.

What a lovely picture.

As he ends his first year in office, Mr. Trump is redefining what it means to be president.

Let us hope it's not a redefinition. Let us hope it dies when he leaves.

Despite all his bluster, he views himself less as a titan dominating the world stage than a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously, according to interviews with 60 advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress.

I refuse to believe he could be so aware.

Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.

Jesus. We could have guessed.  His idea of becoming president wasn't for the country at all - merely to give him the largest studio set in the world.

For Mr. Trump, every day is an hour-by-hour battle for self-preservation. He still relitigates last year’s election, convinced that the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, into Russia’s interference is a plot to delegitimize him. Color-coded maps highlighting the counties he won were hung on the White House walls.

Sad!

His approach got him to the White House, Mr. Trump reasons, so it must be the right one.

Hard to believe anyone, let alone a Times reporter, hasn't figured out that Trump doesn't reason. He simply reacts. This isn't a plan or an "approach". This is Trump. This is who he is. An insecure, petty, narcissist lacking self-awareness and any concern about what he sets afire to soothe his enormous and raw ego, even if that's the whole world.

For most of the year, people inside and outside Washington have been convinced that there is a strategy behind Mr. Trump’s actions. But there is seldom a plan apart from pre-emption, self-defense, obsession and impulse.

Except it's not a plan at all. It's simply "pre-emption, self-defense, obsession and impulse."

He calls [Chief of Staff John] Kelly up to a dozen times a day, even four or five times during dinner or a golf outing, to ask about his schedule or seek policy advice, according to people who have spoken with the president.

That's someone who can't remember anything and who needs constant reassurance and handling. This is not a good sign.  Does Kelly have a life?

In June, according to a longtime adviser, he excitedly called friends to say he had the perfect tweet to neutralize the Russia investigation. He would call it a “witch hunt.” They were unimpressed.

Perfect.

When three former campaign advisers were indicted or pleaded guilty this fall, Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer handling the investigation, urged the president not to respond. If he did, it would only elevate the story.

Mr. Trump, however, could not help himself. He tweeted that the financial charges lodged against his former campaign manager, Paul J. Manafort, had nothing to do with the campaign and that investigators should be examining “Crooked Hillary & the Dems” instead. By the next morning, he was belittling George Papadopoulos, the campaign adviser who pleaded guilty to lying about his outreach to Russians, dismissing him as a “low level volunteer” who has “proven to be a liar.”

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He was calm at first when his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, pleaded guilty.

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By Sunday morning, with news shows consumed by Mr. Flynn’s case, the president grew angry and fired off a series of tweets excoriating Mrs. Clinton and the F.B.I., tweets that several advisers told him were problematic and needed to stop, according to a person briefed on the discussion.

But. He couldn't help himself.

One former top adviser said Mr. Trump grew uncomfortable after two or three days of peace and could not handle watching the news without seeing himself on it.

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During the morning, aides monitor “Fox & Friends” live or through a transcription service in much the way commodities traders might keep tabs on market futures to predict the direction of their day.

If someone on the show says something memorable and Mr. Trump does not immediately tweet about it, the president’s staff knows he may be saving Fox News for later viewing on his recorder and instead watching MSNBC or CNN live — meaning he is likely to be in a foul mood to start the day.

Good god. This is the very seat of government. Is this what presidential aides are meant to do?

His vision of executive leadership was shaped close to home, by experiences with Democratic clubhouse politicians as a young developer in New York. One figure stands out to Mr. Trump: an unnamed party boss — his friends assume he is referring to the legendary Brooklyn fixer Meade Esposito — whom he remembered keeping a baseball bat under his desk to enforce his power. To the adviser who recounted it, the story revealed what Mr. Trump expected being president would be like — ruling by fiat, exacting tribute and cutting back room deals.

But while he is unlikely to change who he is on a fundamental level, advisers said they saw a novice who was gradually learning that the presidency does not work that way. And he is coming to realize, they said, the need to woo, not whack, leaders of his own party to get things done.

The man doesn't know how to woo. He's a pussy-grabber.

And who on earth doesn't know the presidency of the US doesn't work like the boss of a crime organization?  He knew.  He just thought he'd get to do it his way.  He thought the Russian mob friends of his, with Putin's help, would see that he got to.  He's in hock up to his squinty little eyes to the Russian mob, but thought he was the top dog.  He's an idiot beyond even the grasp of satire.

Even after a year of official briefings and access to the best minds of the federal government, Mr. Trump is skeptical of anything that does not come from inside his bubble.

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Other aides bemoan his tenuous grasp of facts, jack-rabbit attention span and propensity for conspiracy theories.

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Mr. Trump is an avid newspaper reader who still marks up a half-dozen papers with comments in black Sharpie pen, but Mr. Bannon has told allies that Mr. Trump only “reads to reinforce.” Mr. Trump’s insistence on defining his own reality — his repeated claims, for example, that he actually won the popular vote — is immutable and has had a “numbing effect” on people who work with him, said Tony Schwartz, his ghostwriter on “The Art of the Deal.”

“He wears you down,” Mr. Schwartz said.

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He needs support, a sounding board and, as a lifelong hotelier, guests.

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He has an odd affinity for showing off bathrooms, including one he renovated near the Oval Office.

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“I can invite anyone for dinner, and they will come!” Mr. Trump marveled to an old friend when he took office.

Mr. Trump has always relished gossiping over plates of well-done steak, salad slathered with Roquefort dressing and bacon crumbles, tureens of gravy and massive slices of dessert with extra ice cream.

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Over the summer, he invited four Democratic lawmakers and immediately peppered them with questions as they strolled through the Diplomatic Reception Room.

“Who is going to run against me in 2020?” he asked, according to a person in attendance. “Crooked Hillary? Pocahontas?”

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Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the president opined, would definitely run — “even if he’s in a wheelchair,” Mr. Trump added, making a scrunched-up body of a man in a wheelchair.

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Even when Mr. Trump is in a lighthearted mood, hints of anxiety waft over the table like steam over a teacup. In September, he met with evangelical leaders to reassure them that he would still pursue their agenda despite a flirtation with Democrats.

“The Christians know all the things I’m doing for them, right?” he asked.

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When the guests depart, the remote control comes back out. He is less likely to tweet at this hour, when the news he would react to is mostly recycled from hours earlier.

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In recent weeks, Mr. Trump’s friends have noticed a different pitch, acknowledging that many aides and even his own relatives could be hurt by Mr. Mueller’s investigation.

Not that he cares.

“It’s life,” he said of the investigation.

"Look at this gold toilet."

He's a narcissistic pig. That's the sum and substance of Donald J Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.