What do you do most mornings at 2:17 a.m.?
Safe to say, I am almost always sound asleep in deep darkness and brisk mountain air.
But nights are quite a bit different for the current commander in chief and leader of the free world.
President Donald Trump is famously known for his minimal sleeping hours, a stark contrast to his predecessor who dedicated 40 percent of his presidency to vacation time.
Four to five hours of sleep a night is said to be the norm for the 78-year-old Trump. And his doctor says Trump handles such little sleep quite well.
This is ridiculous.
The current 47th president has been observed indulging in game-film analysis during the early morning hours. He was engrossed in reviewing replays of the day’s political occurrences on C-SPAN. This unusual habit takes place in the dead of night, an intriguing detail.
The world discovered this by accident.
At a recent Cabinet meeting held at the White House, Trump was heard mentioning to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer that he had closely followed his congressional testimony. Remarkably, he disclosed that he had watched the testimony consecutively for two nights.
Well, actually, two very early mornings in a row.
“You were on every night, at 3 o’clock in the morning!” the president said, sounding impressed.
Following a reader’s tip, Playbook author Jack Blanchard did some checking with C-SPAN. And sure enough. The Greer video ran at 2:23 a.m. on Wednesday, April 9, and 2:17 a.m. on Thursday, April 10.
Then, at last week’s Republican National Congressional Committee’s black-tie banquet, Trump recalled watching House Speaker Mike Johnson on C-SPAN. “
“As Mike said before – I happened to listen to him. He was on C-SPAN 1. That’s a big upgrade, right? I was listening as I was putting on the tie. How does it look? He was on C-SPAN 1.”
– Pres. Trump at NRCC dinner – National Building Museum pic.twitter.com/rmVoWiZd8G
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) April 9, 2025
Later during those same dinner remarks, the president said while watching TV late, he had learned of falling gasoline prices .”
RELATED: The Physical Results Are in, and the President Is Just Fine – Unlike Joe Biden
For a very long time, almost from its beginning 46 years ago last month, I have regarded nonprofit C-SPAN as a national treasure, especially since I am an admitted political junkie. And someone who was often writing for work about events that the network carried without advertising or pontificating.
It’s as if the network thinks that, given access to events and facts free of shading, Americans can think for themselves.
Over the years, I remember consuming hours of its coverage of presidential candidates in New Hampshire living rooms and at Iowa picnics, giving me a real sense of their personal skills and interactions at widely separated events I was unable to attend.
And providing a video transcript to check quotes. (I noticed even then that Joe Biden was more interested in telling his stories than listening to those of voters.)
Then, came 1999 and 2000, and, lo and behold, I was working for a presidential campaign, attending such events. I already knew the ropes.
Wednesday night, C-SPAN will even carry live, unfiltered coverage at 8 ET of the debate among candidates who want to be prime minister of Canada while it’s still an independent country.
C-SPAN’s video archives and transcripts now contain almost 300,000 hours of its event coverage from today, yesterday, last weekend, and all the way back comprehensively to 1987.
The archives are even searchable. Say, for instance, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted to reminisce about her staged exasperations when she was playing defense during Trey Gowdy’s House oversight hearings on the Benghazi massacre.
Clinton could relive her sad histrionics about the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when President Barack Obama was AWOL somewhere. His administration had no backup or rescue plan for the county’s representatives under attack.
That left Clinton, who had cut embassy security there, to preside alone so ineffectively over the murders of an ambassador and three aides by a roving mob of terrorists in Libya, which had become a lawless state after Obama ordered U.S. forces to help European allies oust Moammar Gaddafi. He was ultimately torn apart by a mob.
That’s when Clinton uttered her infamous self-congratulatory quote, “We came. We saw. He died.”
Except that was followed by four Americans who came, got caught, and died. A U.S. government review found no one at fault.
