Donald Trump’s day: eight hours of TV and 12 Diet Cokes

Donald Trump spends up to eight hours a day in front of a television screen, downing Diet Coke and tweeting.

Donald Trump downs 12 Diet Cokes a day. Picture: Getty Images.

The most talked-about man in the world rises at about 5.30am and sometimes sends his first tweet of the morning while watching television propped up on the pillows of the White House master bedroom.

Television news coverage will continue to shape President Trump’s mood until he goes to sleep some 18 hours later, according to a survey of many of those closest to him.

He will by then have typically spent between four and eight of those hours in front of a television screen, sometimes with the volume muted, stewing over or relishing the portrayal of his actions and those of his administration on channels that he perceives to be either friendly or hostile.

He tends to share his thoughts on the news with anyone in the room, including the household staff who bring him lunch or one of the dozen Diet Cokes that he drinks most days.

He allegedly turns on the television in his bedroom as soon as he wakes and flicks between CNN, which he publicly disparages, for news and Fox News for ideas and validation. Staff monitor Fox and Friends, the Fox News morning program, for indicators that will predict the president’s emotional state.

Sometimes Mr Trump also watches the MSNBC program Morning Joe for an alternative perspective that fires him up for the day. Its host, the former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, suggested on air last week that the president might be suffering from dementia. Mr Trump had previously insinuated that Mr Scarborough could have been involved in the death of an aide who collapsed and died in his office at Congress in 2001. Her death was ruled an accident at the time.

At some point most mornings the president then reaches for his iPhone. Aides said that he usually tweets from his bed or from the den next door to his room, where there is another television.

Occasionally he waits to send his first social media message until he has reached the Treaty Room, where he begins his official and unofficial calls.

Mr Trump’s viewing habits have been revealed by The New York Times, which sent a questionnaire to 60 presidential advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress.

They say he is an avid reader of newspapers, annotating half a dozen papers with a black marker pen, but he only “reads to reinforce”, according to Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist who was pushed out of the White House but remains a confidant.

Television and conversations with a trusted circle of advisers remain his chief information source.

“He really loves verbal briefings,” said Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary. “He is not one to consume volumes of books or briefings.” During meetings in the White House Mr Trump keeps an eye on headlines scrolling across the bottom of the 60-inch television screen in the dining room.

Mr Trump did not specifically respond to the report yesterday. Instead he tweeted about the success of the US economy “a subject the Fake News spends as little time as possible discussing” and played golf on one of his Florida courses with the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a former Republican opponent who is increasingly seen as an ally.

Mr Graham was among the contributors to the New York Times article. He told the newspaper that the Trump presidency was a work in progress where “everything’s possible, from complete disaster to a home run”.

The Times