President Donald Trump’s voracious cable news consumption is well-known — he often reacts via Twitter to guests and packages on Fox News particularly.
But during a Thursday press conference, he left no doubt as to the sheer volume he devours in a 24-hour period.
Trump names the many Fox shows he watched last night and this morning pic.twitter.com/MMLLlSXZJN
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 10, 2020
“I watch Liz MacDonald, she’s fantastic — Fox Business. I watched Lou Dobbs last night, Sean Hannity last night, Tucker last night, Laura,” he said. “I watched ‘Fox and Friends’ in the morning.”
If he did watch all the shows in their entirety, Trump took in a mind-numbing eight hours of Fox Business Network and Fox News programming in the last 24 hours.
Trump’s lax attitude towards the prodigious workload of the presidency has come up before: it was a mini-scandal in 2019 when Trump’s private schedule was leaked full of blank swaths of unscheduled “executive time.”
He’s made changes to the West Wing to aid the compulsion, installing a large flatscreen TV on the wall of the White House dining room. According to the New York Times, the TV is such his constant companion that it drones on in the background when he makes calls.
