Being US President is one of the most demanding jobs in the world. Donald Trump seems to have already mastered his schedule however. As well as getting up early to watch cable TV shows, he also records them to "obsessively" watch in the evening, it has been reported.
According to Gabriel Sherman, National Affairs Editor at New York Magazine, people close to the White House say Mr Trump has begun watching “a lot” of Fox News recently, after a period of tuning in to CNN. But not wanting to miss anything, the President also has a system that allows him to catch up on the day's morning shows before bed.
Appearing on Slate magazine’s Trump podcast on Monday, Sherman shared information he had gleaned from his White House contacts with host Jacob Weisberg. “My sources in Trumpworld say that he watches a lot of Fox,” he said. “But the other thing he does, a source close to the White House has told me, is that he DVRs [digitally records] basically all of the cable news.”
Mr Trump’s TV consumption has reportedly been a source of concern to his aides since he became President. But so far his team has failed to have any real influence on what Sherman calls his “obsessive” behaviour. “It’s kind of remarkable really, that someone would actually want to watch cable news on recording,” he says. “Donald Trump apparently does, and when he goes back up to the residence at the end of the day, I’ve been told he spends a lot of time flipping through the cable networks, including CNN, and catching up on the way he’s been covered. This is a man whose validation is cemented by the way the media covers him, so he obsessively monitors his media coverage."
Mr Trump’s viewing habits have been a source of interest to the media since he became President. He has repeatedly tweeted in response to TV coverage, sometimes within minutes of it airing. In February CNN began to track Mr Trump’s "TV" tweets, and post them alongside the moments that seemed to inspire them.
In one instance recorded earlier this month, “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade said Russia "ran right over" Obama for eight years. Ten minutes later, at 8:03am, Mr Trump tweeted: “For eight years Russia ‘ran over’ President Obama, got stronger and stronger, picked-off Crimea and added missiles. Weak! @foxandfriends”
Mr Trump's love-hate relationship with the media has become one of the biggest traits of his presidency so far. While he regularly condemns the press' coverage of him, and calls entire outlets like CNN "fake news", reports like Sherman's suggest he's not going to switch off anytime soon.
