Nice work if you can get it. Must be nice to have a six figure income where you can roll into work at high noon — or not at all. Remember, Donald likes to take a lot of golf vacations. I’ll bet that if we add up the time spent at Bedminster or Mar-a-Lago and compare that with time spent at the White House, the two golf clubs will win hands down. Joe Biden got hit with the handle “Sleepy Joe” but nobody ever saw him doze off in an Oval Office full of people for even one minute, let alone a full twenty. With Trump, for all that we know, that’s a normal day. Maybe he sprawls out on one of the couches.
NYT: In 2017, the first year of his first term, Mr. Trump’s scheduled events started at 10:31 a.m. on average. By contrast, Mr. Trump in his second term has started scheduled events in the afternoon on average, at 12:08 PM
Trump’s total official appearances have decreased by 39%… pic.twitter.com/qBFvGgcXSZ
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) November 25, 2025
So he’s making 60% of the effort he made during term one. Maybe this is good news. I’m not the least bit surprised about Trump rolling in at noon and I’m willing to bet good money that next year it will be later in the afternoon and by year four, if Trump shows up at all, it will be a late afternoon gig about cocktail hour and then that’s that for the day. J.D. Vance may get his dream of being a Dick Cheney-esque VP, if that’s not happening already.
The sublime irony here is that Trump touts himself as “never sleeping” being a virtual fireball of energy, working, working working, just tirelessly grinding away on MAGAs behalf. And I guess they believe it. They believed the likes of Jim Jones, too, and we saw how that ended.
Jones had a secretary that Karoline Leavitt would have loved. Completely cut from the same bolt of cloth. Jones’s secretary portrayed a normal church member, one stricken with a disability which took her ability to walk and her eyesight. Until one day, Jim Jones spoke the word — and the secretary comes flying out of her chair, sighted, and runs straight to Jones’s podium. Total Leavitt take. I’m sure Leavitt envies her the ability to do a performance of that caliber.
That’s a reasonable theory but I’m sticking with my original one: This is not a job that Trump wants. He hates it. It’s wayyyy more work than he thought it would be and he said that to Obama when Obama showed him the ropes back in 2017.
Trump ran again to run the country that he tried to overthrow when he ran it before because he was running from a prison cell. That’s my theory. I see no reason to change it.
This misadministration is held together by spit and baling wire and it shows cracks in the foundation each and every day. If Trump had things wired, would his revenge tour be the stuff of punchlines? Would Pete Hegseth be hiding away while the head of the Army does negotiations that Hegseth rightfully should? Would the head of the FBI be making headlines for giving his girlfriend everything from a SWAT team to private jet rides?
No, things are a total mess. And it starts with Trump and he’s a total mess. The best we can hope for is minimal damage until this time next year when the House can be retaken (and maybe in some glorious development, so can the Senate, but let’s not start counting chickens.)
Ironically, nobody will be happier when Trump is stonewalled by Congress than Trump himself. He’s spent. He’s exhausted. He’s old and he’s not the kind of old person who takes great care of himself. He’s corseted, wired, leg-braced, cathetered, madeup and hairsprayed within an inch of his life.
If you needed all that hardware and makeup to appear in public, you wouldn’t be out of the house before noon either.
Given Drumpf’s “work” schedule as pResident, you gotta wonder what he actually *did* running his real estate ventures and all the rest of his tawdry little schemes from the 1970s to 2015. I mean, okay, with “The Apprentice,” he didn’t actually have to do much (if anything) other than make an appearance that aired for a couple of minutes per episode (I’m just guessing as I had zero interest in that program) and he got rewarded very handsomely by NBC for that little bit of nothing, both in actual cash and in putting out his brand (you kind of have to wonder how many advertisers considered they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor another business?).
Agreed but note that, despite his dotage and dozing, the ship of state sails on with Miller at the tiller grinding out the malevolence and other enablers following orders and/or developing their grifts. The momentum comes from the galley slaves in Congress who are getting restless, albeit there is no Spartacus (MTG?). All is well but there are so many storms on the near horizon. Recession anyone?
Who gets the PDB? Pence used to get it because 47 couldn’t handle it. Vance now? 47 is transactional – but for himself.