WASHINGTON — President Trump has been working up to 12-hour days this month, according to Oval Office logs the White House provided to The Post after the New York Times claimed there were “signs of fatigue” in his less detailed public schedule.
The previously unpublished “private narrative” documents span 10 weekdays between Nov. 12 and Nov 25 — the day the Times story was published — and show the president worked roughly 50-hour weeks, not counting any official duties that may have been performed on weekends.
The White House made the rare decision to share the logs to counter the narrative that Trump, 79, is slowing with age — with the files instead showing him working longer hours than the average American as he overhauls trade and immigration policies, attempts to end the Russia-Ukraine war and spearheads the most significant construction at the White House in decades.
President Trump is pictured on Nov. 12 signing a bill to end the 43-day government shutdown. He had work meetings from 10:30 a.m. past 10:40 p.m. that day. Bonnie Cash/UPI/Shutterstock
The files also do not list unsolicited cellphone calls that he’s known to answer early in the morning and late into the night or his after-hours social media posts.
On Wednesday, Nov. 12, the president’s Oval Office aides logged 32 meetings and calls with subordinates, lawmakers and businessmen on the day that Congress voted to end the 43-day government shutdown.
Trump started that day with a 10:30 a.m. staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room before launching into back-to-back phone calls and meetings with officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Staff Secretary Will Scharf. He placed six calls to lawmakers, three to judicial nominees and one to an architect.
Trump ended the day with a 7:45 p.m. dinner with Wall Street CEOs, an after-10 p.m. bill-signing event to end the shutdown and a meeting with a corporate executive that began at 10:40 p.m., according to the records.
On Thursday Nov. 13, Trump held 17 meetings and calls over eight-and-a-half hours, beginning with a 10:39 a.m. sit-down with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Counsel David Warrington.
Trump met that morning with Secretary of State Marco Rubio before receiving his intelligence briefing, then held a speechwriter “pre-brief,” signed an executive order with first lady Melania Trump, granted a media interview, spoke with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and joined a 6 p.m. tele-rally for Tennessee congressional candidate Mike Van Epps in addition to other meetings and calls, the logs show.
White House Chief of Staff Susie WIles told The Post:.”The more that’s going on, the higher his level of function.” REUTERS
On Nov. 14, Trump kicked off his Friday with four phone calls to foreign heads of state, starting at 8:21 a.m. as he sought to calm a flareup in border tensions between Cambodia and Thailand.
He then held 18 other meetings and calls and granted another media interview ahead of his departure for a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. — speaking to reporters for 26 minutes aboard Air Force One.
Some names are redacted in the files provided to The Post, but the records are broadly consistent with known happenings on the days in question.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday blasted the New York Times’ report on Trump experiencing “fatigue” and paring back his public schedule. Andrew Leyden/ZUMA / SplashNews.com
The Times’ article on Trump’s schedule — headlined, “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office” — enraged the president and was based on his public schedule, rather than the more comprehensive and non-public logs kept by staffers in the “Outer Oval.”
“According to a Times analysis of the official presidential schedules in a database maintained by Roll Call, Mr. Trump’s first official event starts later in the day. In 2017, the first year of his first term, Mr. Trump’s scheduled events started at 10:31 a.m. on average,” the article says.
“By contrast, Mr. Trump in his second term has started scheduled events in the afternoon on average, at 12:08 p.m. His events end on average at around the same time as they did during the first year of his first term, shortly after 5 p.m.”
The Times report continued, “Trump still regularly comes down to the Oval Office after 11 a.m., according to a person familiar with his schedule.” (The 10 work days covered by the release reflect West Wing meetings that begin before 11 a.m. on seven of the days — all after 10:12 a.m.)
Trump was so upset he tore into Times White House reporter Katie Rogers as “ugly, both inside and out.”
Trump dances on the tarmac with native performers in Malaysia on Oct. 26 after a 23-hour flight. AP
Trump, 79, is the second oldest person to serve as president — after Joe Biden — and has for years taken pains to avoid looking weak or frail, likely adding to his irritation at the Times report.
In October 2020, Trump walked across the White House lawn in a suit and tie and flashed a thumbs-up to the press despite being seriously ill with COVID-19 that forced his hospitalization at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
The White House accused the Times of attempting to portray Trump as fading mentally — as is now widely accepted to have been the case with Biden, who left office at age 82 in January.
“The New York Times cobbled together half-baked data to push a narrative that President Trump, who is clearly sharp as a tack, is somehow unfit to be president, after they covered for Joe Biden’s clear cognitive decline,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Post after ripping into the Times’ portrayal at her regular briefing Monday afternoon.
“The truth is President Trump never stops working, and his private schedule, Truth Social posts, and around-the-clock engagement on every issue proves just that.”
Trump flew from his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea to DC and handed out Halloween candy the same day. MediaPunch / BACKGRID
“I cannot imagine anybody with more dedication and focus and work ethic than Donald Trump,” added Wiles. “At least in my life and career, I’ve seen nothing like it and it seems to accelerate as we go through the term. He draws energy from people and experiences and work generally. The more that’s going on, the higher his level of function.”
In response to Trump’s initial broadside against Rogers, a Times spokesperson said last week: “The Times’s reporting is accurate and built on first hand reporting of the facts. Name-calling and personal insults don’t change that, nor will our journalists hesitate to cover this administration in the face of intimidation tactics like this. Expert and thorough reporters like Katie Rogers exemplify how an independent and free press helps the American people better understand their government and its leaders.”
In response to Leavitt’s Monday comments, the rep told The Post: “The Times’s White House team, including Katie Rogers, the same reporter Ms. Leavitt singled out today, have reported without fear or favor across multiple administrations from both parties. Katie’s reporting on President Biden was just as unflinching as it has been on President Trump, despite cherry-picked headlines attempting to prove something that simply isn’t true.”
The Times report noted that Trump “is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips.”
The president’s foreign trips this year include jaunts across the Middle East and East Asia that featured Trump hosting packed deal-signing events in one nation before quickly jetting to the next — with his most recent foreign trip, from Oct. 25-30 taking him to Qatar, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea.
Trump emerged in Malaysia from a 23-hour flight and danced with native performers on the tarmac, then departed his final stop in South Korea, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, to jet back to DC to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters on the White House lawn.
“As for Asia, he doesn’t sleep… or he sleeps minimally. The rest of us actually need some sleep,” Wiles recounted.
“When we travel like that, nobody can stay up and stay awake with him the whole trip… We take shifts because nobody could possibly keep up with him,” the White House chief of staff said.
“There is a bed in his cabin on Air Force One and I don’t think it has ever been used.”