President Donald Trump has an excuse for everything.
He blamed vandals for damage at his Lincoln Reflecting Pool after hiring no-bid contracts for a rush job.
This time, he’s blaming the clocks after repeatedly leaving others waiting and pushing their patience to the limit.
Being on time has not always been the president’s strong suit. His high-profile events have often started long after his scheduled arrival.
Now, Trump has a surprisingly strange explanation for causing more than one delay.
The 80-year-old president sat down with Real America’s Voice on Tuesday, Aug. 11, to push his crusade for permanent daylight saving time.
He wants the twice-yearly clock change gone for good, then suddenly confessed to something nobody asked him about.
“I was an hour late for an appointment, a big one with a big person from a big country. I was an hour late,” Trump said.
His admission came off without a hint of shame or apology, as if it were something to brag about.
Trump on Daylight Savings: I was an hour late for an appointment, a big one with a big person from a big country. I walk in, "Sir, you're quite late." I said, "What are you talking about?" Oh, you forgot to spring forward, fall back pic.twitter.com/3sNGuP6WsE
— FactPost (@factpostnews) August 11, 2026
But Trump wasn’t done there. He then acted out the whole scene of someone confronting him about being late.
An aide supposedly told him, “Sir, you’re quite late,” and POTUS replied, “What are you talking about?” Someone then had to remind him he’d forgotten to spring forward or fall back.
The White House gave its usual nonanswer before Trump made his daylight saving pitch. “What is 99—even 100—percent is people hate changing their clocks all the time,” he claimed despite offering no evidence for the statistic.
That vague “big person from a big country” excuse has people talking. He gave no date, just a bizarre explanation that may be his wildest yet.
This isn’t the first time Trump has repeatedly kept others waiting for his arrival.
Back in June, at the G7 Summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, Trump walked into a working session already underway. He joined French President Emmanuel Macron and some of the world’s most powerful leaders.
He didn’t apologize. Instead, Trump walked into the room with an assertive message: “I’m the boss.”
The former reality star turned to the press pool mid-meeting and cracked, “Would you like to stay for the meeting? It’s OK with me,” briefly shifting attention away from the session.
If there’s a “big person from a big country” candidate, Macron or another world leader certainly fits Trump’s description.
Then there’s the domestic version of the same routine.
On Aug. 7, at the State Department’s Harry S Truman Building, nearly 200 mining executives were gathered for a critical minerals roundtable where billions of government investment in the sector was announced.
Trump entered the room eight minutes late like he was the headliner as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others clapped.
Rubio made a move for a folder to break the applause but his efforts were quickly abandoned.
Trump hadn’t cleared the room yet, so the folder went back down and the clapping picked right back up.
Trump's cronies stand and clap like seals for an extended period of time, until Trump is safely out of view pic.twitter.com/yFXiSsttYJ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 7, 2026
In October 2025 in Virginia, sailors and their families stood on a pier at Naval Station Norfolk waiting for Trump’s remarks at the Navy’s 250th anniversary celebration.
The speech was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. But Trump didn’t show until nearly an hour later, leaving the crowd waiting with no explanation offered on-site.
Social media isn’t letting the daylight saving excuse slide either.
“Is he trying to blame his repeated tardiness for appointments on daylight savings time?” one person asked. Another zeroed in on a familiar feature of Trump’s storytelling: “Anytime he starts a sentence with ‘sir’ he’s lying.”
Along the same lines, a third comment read, “It absolutely blows my mind how blatantly and easily he tells lies like this. And it’s every day, multiple times,” one said.
One commenter didn’t hold back, writing, “He sleeps on the job so much he loses track of time.”
Another had a simpler theory: “He is almost always late. He enjoys making people wait on him. It gives him a sense of power and control. It has nothing to do with daylight savings time.”
Whether it’s a forgotten clock change, a packed mining roundtable, or a room full of foreign heads of state, the pattern keeps repeating.
Trump shows up on his own timetable, explains it however he wants, and leaves everyone else to sort out the rest.
And his latest explanation didn’t land a presidents don’t exactly manage their schedules alone. An army of aides, security personnel and advance staff typically moves a commander in chief from place to place. That makes a simple clock change seem like an unlikely cause for an hour-long delay.
So, who was the mystery “big person from a big country” waiting an hour for Trump? He may never tell.
But given his track record, the world’s leaders may want to start building in an extra hour whenever Trump’s name is on the schedule.
