Trump, as George Will would no doubt agree, is different. He does fill his days and nights with the presidency, just not in a way that any of us, liberal or conservative, would recognize as overly laborious. He takes the Randy Bachman approach to the presidency. Surely you know the song “Takin’ Care of Business,” one of the most ubiquitous and misguidedly employed songs in the history of political rallies, with its line about loving to “work at nothing all day”? That’s the approach Donald Trump has taken to the job of the U.S. presidency: He shows up for “work.” In its way, it is physically exhausting. But at the end of each working day — whether it begins with “executive time” and an early-morning binge of Fox & Friends or a visit to a Trump-owned golf course — it’s not at all clear what something Trump actually works at.

Trump has reimagined the presidency as a species of performance art. He tweets, therefore, he is. Reportedly one of his favorite publicity stunts was letting cameras into a bipartisan meeting about gun violence. He spoke, he listened, he appeared to be running the show (a show, at any rate). Nothing was decided. Nothing of substance has occurred since then. It was a perfectly vaporous event.