Being president of the United States of America is a tough job. It’s a very busy job with all kinds of very important responsibilities. President (Blech) Trump is someone who isn’t even good at his normal job of business man, and he has lucked his way into a much more serious job. But whether you believe Trump is a man of fascistic leanings (he is) or not (he is), you can believe that he isn’t particularly cut out for the work of the head of the Executive Branch of the United States of America. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, while being a little too nice, does paint an interesting picture of President Trump as a man watching news at all times as somehow his job.
Here is Trump this morning.
This comes moments after Morning Joe ran this.
Twelve minutes after he saw a supportive blog post about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruling on “Morning Joe,” Trump tweeted it out to his 24.5 million Twitter followers. (Sidebar: That blog post wasn't as supportive as Trump thought.)
A couple of weeks ago, Trump had an “impromptu” photo shoot/press conference on one of this first Air Force One trips. In the clip you can hear the television blaring in the background. When the photo shoot begins turning into a question and answer session, Trump doesn’t budge, just leaves the television going—right through a mattress commercial.
Personally, a lot of Trump’s responses to things strikes me like someone suffering from pretty serious attention deficit disorder, who needs a lot of stimulation to keep from being too frazzled. But whether my armchair psychologizing is correct or not, one thing is for certain: Trump spends an extraordinary amount of time watching cable news.
The president's advisers have tried to curb his cable news consumption during the workday. But there are no limits when the president returns to the residence. During another recent telephone conversation, Trump briefly put down the phone so he could turn up the volume on a CNN report. When he returned to the call, he was complaining about "fake news."
In some ways, his new lifestyle in the White House resembles the routines he created during decades living atop Trump Tower. He long has preferred the comforts of home, eschewing much of Manhattan's social scene in favor of evenings in his penthouse with close friends, family and his television.
We joke about Trump’s knee-jerk responses on Twitter but the ravings of a 70-year-old bigot billionaire are only funny when they aren’t coupled with the power of being president of the United States of America.