Trump sometimes doesn’t start his work day until 1 p.m. and has tons of free time

President Donald Trump enjoys long stretches of “executive time” — a White House euphemism for free time — and doesn’t start his work days until 11 a.m. at the earliest, according to schedules reviewed by Politico.

Being president is a job that usually involves a ton of regimenting, with handlers shepherding the president from meeting to meeting and event to event, until he returns to the White House residence for the evening. Trump, however, reserves large chunks of time for daily TV-watching, tweeting, and phone calls.

On Tuesday, for example, Trump enjoyed almost three times as much “executive time” as he did work time, with nine hours of free time and just three hours of scheduled daily work. And the president didn’t have any official duties scheduled until 1 p.m.

Trump’s largely unstructured days allow him to move White House business based on personal whims and moods, according to Politico.

On Wednesday, as reports of bombs targeting Trump’s critics broke, Trump started with a bright-and-early 11:30 a.m. meeting, delivered remarks on the opioid crisis and gave an interview to the press. Otherwise, the president’s day was wide open until he left Washington for a rally in Wisconsin later in the evening.

And on Friday, during a three-hour block of executive time, the president was apparently watching TV. During those hours, according to Politico, he tweeted that news coverage of the pipe bombs being sent to his critics was distracting from upcoming midterms.

"Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this 'Bomb' stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics," Trump tweeted. "Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!"

Contrast that with President Barack Obama, who Politico reports was routinely booked with policy meetings that took up six or seven hours each day.

"I'd say it was significantly, fundamentally a different pace of intensity of workload," Obama’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Mona Sutphen, told Politico.

Cover image: U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive to give out candy to children at a Halloween celebration at the White House in Washington, DC, on October 28, 2018. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)