If you’re not Fox News then scoring a behind-the-scenes interview, with full access to some usually off-limits parts of the White House, is a pretty big deal.

Donny D was all too happy to show a few TIME reporters around, though, and their cover story is a darn interesting read.

Titled ‘Donald Trump After Hours‘, it’s a revealing look into how things operate behind the scenes at the president’s part-time residence.

If the White House just had a golf course it would be perfect, right?

Let’s dive in and see some of what the story has to say:

Each president leaves his mark on the building, and Trump has wasted little time making his. The modern art favored by the Obama family is mostly gone, replaced with classic oils, including portraits of Trump’s favorite predecessors, like Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. Gold curtains have replaced the maroon ones in the Oval Office, and military-service flag stands have been added around the room, topped by battle ribbons and held in place by heavy brass bases that Trump praises to visitors.

But few rooms have changed so much so fast as his dining room, where he often eats his lunch amid stacks of newspapers and briefing sheets. A few weeks back, the President ordered a gutting of the room…

Trump says he used his own money to pay for the enormous crystal chandelier that now hangs from the ceiling. “I made a contribution to the White House,” he jokes. But the thing he wants to show is on the opposite wall, above the fireplace, a new 60-plus-inch flat-screen television that he has cued up with clips from the day’s Senate hearing on Russia. Since at least as far back as Richard Nixon, Presidents have kept televisions in this room, usually small ones, no larger than a bread box, tucked away on a sideboard shelf. That’s not the Trump way.

Just look at that joy on his face when holding the remote – bliss.

Trump is focused on his TV. He watches the screen like a coach going over game tape, studying the opposition, plotting next week’s plays. “This is one of the great inventions of all time—TiVo,” he says as he fast-forwards through the [Senate hearing on Russia].

If you needed further proof that the man loves telly, he just listed TiVo as one of the great inventions of all time.

So other than his tweet storms, how does he deal with everyone calling him an idiot?

To cope with this new reality, the President says he is trying a mindfulness trick: he has tried to tune out the bad news about himself. “I’ve been able to do something that I never thought I had the ability to do. I’ve been able not to watch or read things that aren’t pleasant,” he will say later in the night, listing off the networks he tries to tune out and the newspapers he struggles to skim.

Of course, as his public outbursts indicate, he does not always succeed, but he says he no longer feels a need to know everything said about him. “In terms of your own self, it’s a very, very good thing,” he says. “The equilibrium is much better.”

Ostrich-like behaviour, although it’s clear that the bird he most physically resembles is the golden pheasant:

Back to life in the House:

Trump has lived most of these first months alone in his upstairs palace, inhabiting 20,000 square feet of the residence by himself most weeknights, catered to by a household staff that totals nearly 100, including a couple of valets and a handful of butlers…

The waiters know well Trump’s personal preferences. As he settles down, they bring him a Diet Coke, while the rest of us are served water, with the Vice President sitting at one end of the table. With the salad course, Trump is served what appears to be Thousand Island dressing instead of the creamy vinaigrette for his guests.

When the chicken arrives, he is the only one given an extra dish of sauce. At the dessert course, he gets two scoops of vanilla ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, instead of the single scoop for everyone else.

Two goddamn scoops of ice-cream friends, that’s when you know you’ve made it.

Before the dinner breaks up, the President begins to muse about an alternative world to the one he has helped create. “It never made sense to me, the level of animosity,” Trump says. “All you want to do is, like, Let’s have a great military. Let’s have low taxes. Let’s have good health care. Let’s have good education.”

Everyone wants good everything, Donald – no argument there.

While you’re here let’s deal with Trump’s take on Stephen Colbert, in light of that cock-holster joke he made on his show the other day (HERE).

From another TIME story:

You see a no-talent guy like Colbert. There’s nothing funny about what he says. And what he says is filthy. And you have kids watching. And it only builds up my base. It only helps me, people like him. The guy was dying. By the way they were going to take him off television, then he started attacking me and he started doing better. But his show was dying. I’ve done his show. … But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high—highest rating. The highest rating he’s ever had.

You’re not a TV show host any longer, Donald, quit with the ratings garbage.

And Colbert’s response:

.@StephenAtHome only has one thing to say about being called a “no-talent guy.” #LSSC pic.twitter.com/qWJKtuTSaY

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) May 12, 2017

These are strange times we live in.

Go ahead and read the full TIME ‘after hours’ story HERE.

[sources:time&time]