President Trump Slams NYT’s Report On His Life Inside The White House

The New York Times recently published a lengthy piece, detailing President Trump’s life inside the White House. I’m not going to lie. It caught my interest. I mean, who isn’t interested in what life in the White House is like?

The article starts off detailing the minute Trump opens his eyes: 5:30 a.m. (I’ve often wondered how many hours of sleep Trump actually gets. I’m guessing 4-5 tops.) Apparently, Trump flips through the news channels, sometimes landing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“He flips to CNN for news, moves to ‘Fox & Friends’ for comfort and messaging ideas, and sometimes watches MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ because, friends suspect, it fires him up for the day,” NYT says.

This next part is my favorite.

Energized, infuriated — often a gumbo of both — Mr. Trump grabs his iPhone. Sometimes he tweets while propped on his pillow, according to aides. Other times he tweets from the den next door, watching another television. Less frequently, he makes his way up the hall to the ornate Treaty Room, sometimes dressed for the day, sometimes still in night clothes, where he begins his official and unofficial calls.

I’m just picturing Trump tweeting in bed in his fancy pjs. It just cracks me up.

I’m fully aware that this piece is meant to make Trump look like a buffoon who doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s actually quite obvious. See for yourself.

As he ends his first year in office, Mr. Trump is redefining what it means to be president. He sees the highest office in the land much as he did the night of his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton — as a prize he must fight to protect every waking moment, and Twitter is his Excalibur. Despite all his bluster, he views himself less as a titan dominating the world stage than a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously, according to interviews with 60 advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress.

For other presidents, every day is a test of how to lead a country, not just a faction, balancing competing interests. For Mr. Trump, every day is an hour-by-hour battle for self-preservation. He still relitigates last year’s election, convinced that the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, into Russia’s interference is a plot to delegitimize him. Color-coded maps highlighting the counties he won were hung on the White House walls.

Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals. People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted, marinating in the no-holds-barred wars of cable news and eager to fire back.

Really? Anywhere between 4-8 hours of TV a day? That sounds like a stretch. People who work NORMAL 9-5 jobs don’t usually watch that much TV. Trump’s POTUS. There’s no way he has that much time a day to sit around and chill, right?

Wait. There’s more.

If someone on the show says something memorable and Mr. Trump does not immediately tweet about it, the president’s staff knows he may be saving Fox News for later viewing on his recorder and instead watching MSNBC or CNN live — meaning he is likely to be in a foul mood to start the day.

Yet the image of him in a constant rage belies a deeper complexity for a man who runs in bellow-and-banter cycles. Several advisers said the president may curse them for a minor transgression — like bringing an unknown aide into his presence without warning — then make amiable small talk with the same person minutes later.

NYT even claims that Trump “hate watches” CNN, Don Lemon specifically.

When the guests depart, the remote control comes back out. He is less likely to tweet at this hour, when the news he would react to is mostly recycled from hours earlier. But he watches Ms. Pirro and her fellow Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and sometimes “hate-watches” CNN to get worked up, especially Don Lemon.

That right there. That’s what made Trump feel the need to respond.

Another false story, this time in the Failing @nytimes, that I watch 4-8 hours of television a day – Wrong! Also, I seldom, if ever, watch CNN or MSNBC, both of which I consider Fake News. I never watch Don Lemon, who I once called the “dumbest man on television!” Bad Reporting.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 11, 2017

I can’t help but LOL at that. “I never watch Don Lemon, who I once called the ‘dumbest man on television!'”

But yeah. NYT’s report mostly focused on Trump’s TV habits, because #journalism.

Here’s what I don’t understand. If NYT’s report is true as they say, why would they write a piece like that in the first place? If they KNOW Trump loves the hate and gets a high off the negative attention, why are they doing this? Isn’t that what Trump wants? They’re only hurting themselves. They’re fueling him.

It’s all so dumb.