Michael Scherer

I mean, Barack Obama ran a government like a corporation, you know, like he wanted to be efficient, he wanted to be effective, he wanted all the rules to be followed, he wanted a process, and everyone was playing their part, but it was not about pleasing him.

Um, he wakes up late.

Obama would start work very early in the Oval Office and, you know, work until dinnertime and then he'd go back to the residence.

Trump comes down later in the morning.

I think on an average day, he's in front of live cameras.

If he's at the White House...

I don't know, one to three hours in a day.

I mean, that's a lot of time to be just talking on the record to somebody or doing something like that.

And I think the rest of the time is much more free form.

I don't think that sort of like drive towards efficiency and structure is something that interests him.

I think what interests him is...

is how much he can get out of every day, what transaction he can have and what he gets out of each transaction.

I think it's the reason he's been so interested in foreign policy.

There's an enormous amount of power when it comes to foreign policy.

So he can get on the phone with all kinds of world leaders, and he loves talking to anybody.

I mean, he really has no problem taking phone calls from just about anybody.

talking to the new mayor of New York in a friendly way, talking to try and settle wars in corners of the world.

I think, I mean, all presidents have done this differently.

You know, I've heard, especially since the last election, quite a bit of criticism from people who work for Biden about how little they engaged with him when they were in the White House.

And he had basically built a structure there at the end of his term where he would weigh in on things, but he wasn't at the center of most of the discussions going on.