Trump talks so much that White House staff struggling to keep up

Associated Press

Washington: The White House stenographers have a problem. Donald Trump is talking so much, the people responsible for transcribing his public remarks are struggling to keep up with all the words. There were more than 22,000 on Inauguration Day, then another 17,000 when Trump visited disaster sites in North Carolina and California. It's enough to strain the ears and fingers of even the most dedicated stenographer, especially after four years of Joe Biden's relative quiet. Now there are discussions about hiring additional staff to keep up with the workload, according to people with knowledge of the conversations who insisted in anonymity to discuss internal matters.

The flood of words is one of the most visible or audible shifts from Biden to Trump, who craves the spotlight and understands better than most politicians that attention is a form of power. He's been speaking nearly nonstop since starting his second term, drowning out dissenting voices and leaving his opponents struggling to be heard. Take Wednesday, for example.

During a signing ceremony for legislation to accelerate deportations, Trump, a Republican, talked up his accomplishments, claimed Hamas was using US-funded condoms to make bombs in Gaza, defended his administration's efforts to freeze federal spending and reduce the government workforce, veered through descriptions of migrant violence and made the surprise announcement that Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would be used as a detention centre for people who are in the US illegally.

Trump's commentary remains laden with falsehoods, including baseless allegations about voter fraud and assertions that California water policies worsened the recent wildfires. Sometimes he speaks off the cuff about consequential geopolitical matters, such as a recent suggestion that Palestinians should be displaced from Gaza while the enclave is rebuilt. It can be hard to know when to take him seriously, like when he muses about serving a third term, which the US Constitution does not allow. But now that Trump is back in the presidency, it's hard to ignore him.

“He's dictating the news on his terms," said Michael LaRosa, who worked as a television producer before serving as a spokesperson for former first lady Jill Biden.”He's become America's assignment editor.” Most presidents try to start their terms with a bang, seizing the moment when their influence could be at its peak. However, Trump is in a different league. Biden, a Democrat, spent 2 hours and 36 minutes talking on camera and used 24,259 words in his first week in office four years ago, according to numbers generated by Factba.se. Trump's comparable stats: nearly 7 hours and 44 minutes and 81,235 words last week.

That's longer than watching the original”Star Wars” trilogy back-to-backto- back, and more words than”Macbeth,”“Hamlet” and”Richard III” combined. It's also much more than when Trump took office for his first term eight years ago. Back then, he was only on camera talking for 3 hours and 41 minutes and spoke 33,571 words. Trump has spent decades practising the best ways to get people to pay attention to him. As a New York businessman, he fed stories to gossip columnists.