For 70-year-old president who likes his own bed, this trip is exhausting

For 70-year-old president who likes his own bed, this trip is exhausting

He stifles yawns. His eyes narrow. And ultimately, when he garbles part of his speech, an aide explains that President Trump is “just an exhausted guy.” It was only day two of an eight-day marathon that includes four countries, a city-state (the Vatican) and an occupied territory (the West Bank). By day three, in Israel, he was blinking through an appearance with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s the kind of punishing trip — lots of important people pontificating in windowless rooms, up to seven time zones away — that would tax anyone. But Trump, at 70, is the oldest man to assume the presidency. He also is a noted homebody, who apart from the White House, seldom sleeps away from TrumpOverseas trips can be grueling,” said David Wade, who went on dozens while serving as chief of staff to Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who logged more than 1.4 million miles in visits to 91 countries. “There’s often a death march tendency.”

Every moment needs to be choreographed, and every stop needs to be measured, analyzing layers of geopolitical symbolism. Even if events run late, as they did this weekend in Saudi Arabia, it’s often impossible to cancel them, given diplomatic sensitivities.
“What should be a night where you are supposed to get five hours of sleep becomes a night where you can get back to the hotel and shower before going to [another] event,” Wade said.
Trump started his overseas odyssey with a sleep deficit. It was 2:42 a.m. in Washington — 9:42 a.m. in Saudi Arabia — when Air Force One touched down in Riyadh on Saturday.
The president had slept barely a wink, according to Reince Priebus, the chief of staff. He told reporters that Trump spent the long flight — 12 hours and 20 minutes — meeting with staff, reading newspapers and working on a major speech.
White House officials had considered a daytime flight for Trump’s maiden trip. That would have guaranteed him a night in a hotel room, and sleep, before his first round of meetings with foreign leaders.
But then the trip — initially scheduled as a three- or four-day jaunt to Belgium and Sicily to attend the NATO and G-7 summits — grew more ambitious as aides weighed in.
By Monday night, ahead of more meetings on Tuesday and then a flight to Rome, Trump already has paid a visible price for the grueling itinerary.
He’s run more than an hour behind schedule, pushing events back and even canceling one, a Twitter forum Sunday night in Riyadh. Dozens of youthful attendees left the convention hall when Ivanka Trump, half her father’s age, took the stage instead.
Asked later that night to explain why Trump had deviated from the prepared remarks of his keynote speech in Saudi Arabia, alternately referring to “Islamic” and “Islamist” extremism when the text stipulated only the latter, one administration official explained it rather bluntly: Trump was “just an exhausted guy.”
After all, Trump had met separately that day with four Persian Gulf leaders and had participated in two broader summits. He also had joined grip-and-grins and group photos, capped off by an event to open Saudi Arabia’s new counter-extremism center.
Pockets of downtime in the schedule evaporated as meetings ran long and logistical complications arose.
The admission of Trump’s fatigue is potentially problematic given that he has long boasted about his stamina, emphasizing each syllable to imply his boundless energy.