Trump’s babysitters put ‘policy time’ on his schedule so maybe he'll work

Trump is apparently so disinterested in doing the basic work required to be president, his staffers are now scheduling specific time periods in the day to make him focus on his job.

Politico reporter Anni Karni noted that Trump has “two blocks of ‘policy time'” marked out on his private schedule.

The Washington Post explained that the “policy time” blocks are “sessions once or twice a day where advisers present and argue their competing views over a specific issue, with Trump presiding.”

These structures were put in place by Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, who is reportedly close to being pushed out of the White House in a post-election reshuffle of Trump’s inner circle.

Perhaps Trump is souring on Kelly because “policy time” is cutting into “executive time,” the term Trump and his team have used to describe the excessive amounts of time he spends watching television and tweeting.

“Executive time” has fed a bizarre, destructive feedback loop between Trump and the right-wing propaganda purveyors at Fox News. Trump amplifies Fox’s lies, innuendo, spin, and racism, and Fox feeds Trump’s ego by praising his unpopular presidency using even more lies, innuendo, spin, and racism.

By contrast, it is unlikely that “policy time” has anything quite as fun for Trump as Fox anchor Lou Dobbs declaring on his broadcast that it’s now “Trump time.”

Trump has never wanted to do the real work of leading. That is why he has such a light public schedule and has preferred to spend weekend after weekend at his luxury resorts rather than stay in the White House like other presidents.

And since he can’t be bothered to learn how government works, he pollutes the nation and the world with whatever random thoughts are inspired by the hours he wastes watching television.

We have “executive time” to thank for Trump wasting money on a racist political stunt, inspired by Fox News hysteria about Central American refugees, that is keeping soldiers away from their families for the holidays for no good reason.

And it was probably “executive time,” not anything he learned in “policy time,” that spurred Trump’s late-night decision to insult the grieving families of Californians killed in deadly wildfires by lying about what caused those fires.

Trump simply doesn’t want to do the bare minimum required of him to competently lead, and there’s no evidence he ever will.

No amount of “policy time” can change that.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.