How Donald Trump has spent his first month in office, by the numbers

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The president spent a little under three-quarters of his time in and around Washington during his first month in office. A little less than half of that was time during which he was officially working — as measured by the time between when the media was told to show up in the morning (known as “call time”) until the media was dismissed in the evening (known as “the lid”). This is an imprecise measure of when a president is working, of course; he might take meetings after hours or review documents that are pertinent to his job. That difference is impossible to measure, though, so, in our calculus it blends together with obvious downtime, like when the president is asleep. Or when he’s watching TV, which is also impossible to measure.

Much of Trump’s work time fell into a few basic categories. The estimates below are based on pool reports. Most events were assumed to be an hour, unless the schedule made obvious that the length was shorter or longer. (Numbers below and on the chart above are rounded.)

Intelligence briefings: 6 hours
News conferences: 4 hours
Signing bills and executive orders: 6 hours
Phone calls and meetings with foreign leaders: 21 hours
Listening sessions with various groups: 14 hours

Trump spent 182 hours between call time and the lid with other events that were listed on his public calendar, though not every hour was accounted for during that time. Not captured in those categories are a few special events: the inauguration, the National Prayer Breakfast and the two hours his family spent watching “Finding Dory” in the White House theater. (His press secretary says that Trump didn’t join in.)

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