On Friday, the New York Times accused Donald Trump of spending time eating fries and watching TV during the pandemic, sometimes not arriving at the Oval Office until noon. As a response, multiple White House officials were rolled out to confirm Trump was working non-stop, so much so that the president sometimes misses his lunch.
Let’s make clear that this is not meant to cast shade on lunch-takers. Quite the contrary: taking lunch is as much a measure of how hard one works as a man’s shoe size is a measure of how big his ego is.
But Trump’s “proof” of his hard work is a bit surprising. Almost a third of US workers don’t get to take a lunch break– and those are just ordinary people, the ones who homeschool their children while working from home if they’re lucky enough to have a paycheck, with a salary to reflect that.
Unfortunately for Trump, his routine pales in comparison to other famous leaders’ schedules. Margaret Thatcher was memorably said to have slept just four hours a night, while George W Bush reportedly arrived at the White House at 6.45am. Winston Churchill reportedly did a day and a half’s work in 24 hours during the second world war, but littered among his working day were multiple naps, cocktails, board games and a few decadent meals. If his diary proves anything, it’s that productive people can take a lunch break and still manage to get things done.
As for Trump, there is no way of proving whether he takes his lunch, nor is it possible to measure his productivity from afar. But it’s worth considering that he might be able to take a lunch break if he congratulated himself less.
How much time would he save, you ask? Well, roughly however long it takes to say 260,000 words – and that’s just during press briefings. If he quit the self-compliments altogether, he might even have time to start taking naps.
