President Donald Trump’s late-night Truth Social blitzes have become a concerning trend in his second term—but now one of his Cabinet secretaries has revealed he is up making middle-of-the-night phone calls, too.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum revealed that Trump called him as late as 2:00 a.m. in his second term.
“The latest in the last month was 11:45 p.m.,” Burgum admitted in an appearance on MAGA podcaster Katie Miller’s show. “But over the period of time working and campaigning with him, I’ve gotten them as late as 2:00 a.m.”
Burgum noted that the earliest phone call he received from the president in the last month was at 8:00 a.m.
“President Trump’s always very polite. The first question he always asks is: I didn’t wake you up, did I?” he said.
The 80-year-old president is known for being up all night on his phone, as evidenced by his nonsensical posts on Truth Social at all hours.
The Daily Beast has analyzed Trump’s manic posting, finding that about a third of his social media output now occurs at night. In April, Trump posted 189 times between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time, meaning 83 percent of nights saw at least one late-night post.
At the same time, the president has hardly been seen before the afternoon.
The Daily Beast found that Trump was seen in public only three times in Washington, D.C., before 11 a.m. in the entire month of June, while the vast majority of his appearances took place in the late afternoon.
His public calendar typically lists “Executive Time” starting at 8 a.m.
Even during afternoon events, Trump often appears to doze off, including in the Oval Office, at round tables, and during Cabinet meetings at the White House.
Trump’s nocturnal habits and use of “Executive Time” to catch up on sleep after calling people and posting all night were also confirmed in the bombshell book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
“Occasionally,” the pair wrote, “aides couldn’t reach him during the hours between eight and ten, when they soon came to realize that meant he had stayed up all night, on the phone or watching television or both, only to finally catch some sleep around four or five in the morning.”
