Trump’s excessive hours of ‘daily executive time’ defended by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders

'President Trump has a different leadership style than his predecessors and the results speak for themselves'

The White House is defending President Donald Trump’s excessive use of unstructured “executive time”, reportedly taking up about 60 per cent of his time in the last three months, by claiming it enables him to have a “more creative environment.”

“President Trump has a different leadership style than his predecessors and the results speak for themselves,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Axios, after it published 95 pages of Trump’s schedules leaked by a White House source.

"While he spends much of his average day in scheduled meetings, events, and calls, there is time to allow for a more creative environment that has helped make him the most productive president in modern history."

The leaked schedules revealed that the president would wake up around 6am and have the first five hours of his day allocated for “executive time”. Mr Trump reportedly had more than 300 hours of unregulated time over the three-month period.

The schedule lists that the president was to be in the Oval Office from 8am to 11am. Instead, six White House sources have said that Mr Trump would be in his residence watching TV, catching up on the news and reacting to the press coverage by calling administration officials, staff, Congress members, informal advisors and his friends.

In her statement, Ms Sanders listed what she viewed to be the president’s accomplishments.

"President Trump has ignited a booming economy with lower taxes and higher wages, established the USA as the #1 producer of oil and gas in the world, remade our judiciary, rebuilt our military, and renegotiated better trade deals,” Ms Sanders added. “It’s indisputable that our country has never been stronger than it is today under the leadership of President Trump."

The press secretary also retweeted a post by Madeleine Westerhout, an Oval Office operations director, on Sunday criticising the leak revealing Mr Trump’s use of "executive time".

“What a disgraceful breach of trust to leak schedules. What these don’t show are the hundreds of calls and meetings @realDonaldTrump takes everyday,” Ms Westerhout tweeted. “This POTUS is working harder for the American people than anyone in recent history.”

Some Republicans, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, came to the president’s defence.

“We have continued economic growth, continued wage growth, continued job creation, progress in Chinese trade talks, trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, progress in strengthening NATO, progress in Venezuela,” Mr Gingrich tweeted. “If Trump’s schedule leads to all this he should be applauded for his focus.”

Mr Gingrich also condoned Mr Trump’s executive time by arguing that former British prime minister Winston “Churchill slept late, worked late, took a nap every afternoon (getting into his pajamas)”.