WILL PRESIDENT TRUMP CONTINUE TO “LIE HIMSELF OUT-OF-OFFICE?”

…The President telling another lie.

According to Trump: No president ever worked harder than me!” 

Being the US President has to be one of the most demanding jobs in the country, or perhaps the world.  And if you are a president that has no background in governing, it must be even more demanding.  But for someone like Donald Trump, a wannabe authoritarian dictator, he just continues to wing it as he watches Fox TV until 11:00 AM when he then heads for the Oval Office.

Yes, the White House leaker has once again made us aware that for most mornings, if he’s not scheduled to head somewhere on Air Force One, you can find him kicking back in the WH residence watching whatever Fox & Friends is saying, or deciding what he should decide based on what Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity is telling him to do.

This dunce of a president actually said the following in response to what the White House leaker had leaked about his non-work daily schedule: “I probably work more hours than almost any past president,”  adding that he “had no choice but to work very long hours!”

However, the “WH Leaker” has shown that for most of his mornings, he spends it sending Tweets that are in response to whatever he had heard on Fox.  Or, as his schedule says he was working on “Executive Time” and that’s why he doesn’t show up in his office until 11:00.  He then goes to lunch around noon.

This is the president that had said that he would work long hard hours as president and wouldn’t have the time to play any golf.  But the reality is that Trump has played more golf in his first two years than President Obama did in eight years.

This president, that usually heads off to one of his golf clubs on most weekends, and of course, all those Secret Service and support personnel also have to check in at those locations.  Therefore, on those many weekends, the American tax payer is paying for all those individuals to sleep, eat and stay in those Trump owned locations.

On last Monday, after re-tweeting his assertion from a few days earlier that he is “working hard,” he eliminated any doubt: “No president ever worked harder than me,” he declared.

If you want to hear about a president that did actually “work hard”, you would have to look at FDR’s old schedules.  Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage while recovering from exhaustion after leading the country through the Great Depression and World War II.  Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke after laboring in Europe to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles and then traveling all over the US selling it to the country.  But according to Trump, they were all loafers next to Trump.

The White House Leaker has now released 3 full months of Trump’s work schedules.  It shows that he spent about 60% of his workday in that “Executive Time”.  So, that means watching TV, tweeting, gabbing and the like on the phone, (and many times, not on his secure phone), with his many friends and unofficial advisors.  

In this last week’s schedule that was leaked to Axios,  it showed Trump had really cut back on his Executive Time.  He cut back to…….wait for it…. 50% of his day!

As one op-ed writer put it:  “This sacrifice was hard. You think it’s easy working from 11 to 5?”

Another writer wrote:  “President Trump sometimes seems to miss his ‘other life’……. before becoming the commander-in-chief.” 

But working hard isn’t the only item that he says he is doing better than other presidents.  According to him, He has: “Kept more promises; cut more regulations; and built a better economy than any other president.  This president has had the gall to say he has: Been more popular than any former Republican president.  Trump says that: “No president has ever done more in his first six months,” and no president “Has done more in his first nine months, and no president has done more in their first two years.” 

And per this president, “No president since Abraham Lincoln has been treated worse by the media!”

Actually, in that statement, he might be right.  The difference is that this president has earned that media scorn.

Trump has likewise boasted that “nobody has been tougher on Russia,” that nobody “Has been more with the military than I have as a president,” that: “Nobody wants to speak more than me” under oath with the special counsel,” and that “Nobody believes in the First Amendment more than I do”.   Per Trump: “There’s nobody that respects women more than I do,” and he is: “ The least racist person” and “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.”  

Of course, this is all according to Trump.  What else would you expected from a man like him with such, “an excellent brain and the best words”.

After his first 100 days in office, he actually did tell Reuters: “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”

I almost choked when I heard him say about being the only president that didn’t have a dog: “I wouldn’t mind having one, honestly, but I don’t have any time,” he actually told his supporters this last Monday.

Trump says he must work harder than his predecessors because there are more demands on him than former presidents..........Really?

But look at where he spends his time.

He spends more time appointing staff, because his appointees keep quitting.  George Washington had a lot on his plate, but he didn’t have to attend so many MAGA events or craft so many Twitter insults.  Lincoln fought the Civil War, but he didn’t have so many Fox News interviews, and Lincoln didn’t play on average, a round of golf every five days.

My personal beef with the president is his lack of regularly receiving his intelligence briefings.

The Washington Post reported that President Trump has chosen to receive his intelligence briefing orally, instead of the full written report as past president have done.

“The arrangement underscores Trump’s impatience with exhaustive classified documents that daily go to the commander in chief.  Material that he has said he prefers condensed as much as possible,” this is per The Posts’ writers.

“By not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner,” intelligence experts have warned.

What’s worse, Trump’s schedule to receive the daily briefing has backed off over the course of the year, even as the time of those briefings has slipped later into the morning. 

Trump’s first full month in office, Trump had 11 scheduled briefings that began, on average, at a bit past 9:30AM.  The next month he had 18 briefings, starting a bit past 10:45 a.m. on average.

Last month, he only had nine scheduled briefings and of course, they began at 11AM.

It must be so hard to squeeze in intelligence briefings, because Donald Trump has to spend so much time devising his clever strategies.  As an example, last Tuesday he rejected a bipartisan border deal for avoiding another government shutdown.  But he did say unequivocally that if a shutdown does come, “It’s the Democrats’ fault.”  That response must have taken hours to come up with!

However, Trump’s lying is really getting out of hand.

The El Paso Times reported that violent crime in the city had fallen more than 34% by 2006.  This was well before a border fence was built there.  The city’s Republican mayor said El Paso was one of the safest cities in the US “going back to 2005.”  But because Trump had one of his campaign like rallies in El Paso to push his ridiculous Border Wall that he promised that Mexico would pay for, it took a lot of “Cohunes” for the president to say, “the mayor is full of crap.”

So, the results to date of Trumps' presidency is that Robert Mueller III, the special prosecutor that is investigating the Russia connection to the Trump campaign, he is trusted by the American voting public more than President Trump by a 23 point margin.

The president seems devoted to continuing to make incorrect statements about his ability as a US President and he seems to be obsessed with lying his way out of office.

“You go Mr. President!”

Copyright G .Ater 2019