What President Trump is supposed to be doing while he’s tweeting

By Philip Bump

February 9 at 9:41 AM

This article has been corrected.

President Trump rose to the defense of his daughter Ivanka on Tuesday, after her clothing line was dropped by the retail chain Nordstrom.

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There are a lot of reasons that this was a questionable thing to tweet, starting with the fact that the president of the United States was using his time — and government resources, once he retweeted from @POTUS — to bolster his daughter’s business.

But then people started to notice something else: The tweet was sent at 10:51 a.m. Eastern, about 20 minutes after Trump was supposed to have been participating in his daily intelligence briefing, according to his published schedule.

Not only that, but many of Trump’s tweets are sent from an Android phone. Trump’s Android phone is apparently the same one he’s used for years. Wired called that device “very, very risky” given that he’s using an old phone that’s significantly vulnerable to hacking. This prompted another concern: Did Trump have that phone in the briefing with him? Was he carrying an insecure device with a microphone into one of the most secure places in the world?

The answer is no in this case. Trump doesn’t actually take the daily briefing every day (despite its title), and it’s on his calendar again for Thursday — meaning that he probably skipped Wednesday’s. What’s more, the Ivanka tweet came from an iPhone. But the whole thing raised an interesting question: What’s the president supposed to be doing at those moments when he’s tweeting?
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Correction: This article originally said that the Nordstrom tweet was sent from Trump’s Android device, which it wasn’t.

Philip Bump is a correspondent for The Post based in New York City. Follow @pbump