Today's Politico Playbook Audio Briefing is presented by Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

Good Monday morning. I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your Political Playbook Audio Briefing.

And I'm Anna Palmer. Fifty-two thousand four hundred and fifty-five nine Americans died from the coronavirus as of Saturday.

Which means by now 81 days since the first recorded death,

we've probably lost more of our countrymen to this virus than we did in Vietnam.

Far be it from us to divine what's in anyone's head or heart, but let's take a look at the

publicly available evidence to try to understand what's consuming the White House right now.

The administration seems to have extensively participated in a piece in the New York Post

about the president's inability to carve out time for lunch because he works too hard.

Mark Meadows, the president's chief of staff, gave what appears to be his first on-the-record

interview for this piece,

where he said this,

I can tell you that the biggest concern I have as a new Chief of Staff

is making sure he gets some time to get a quick bite to eat.

Wait a second, that's his biggest concern.

The first graph of this New York Post piece is President Trump's schedule is so packed amid

the coronavirus crisis that he

sometimes skips lunch his aides told the post refuting a report that the commander in chief spends

his days obsessing over TV coverage and eating fries. So the White House was seeking to push back

on this great Katie Rogers Annie Carney piece in the Times, which was in part about how Trump is fixated on media

coverage. But, you know, when you participate in a piece aiming to knock down the narrative

that you're obsessed with media coverage, you're showing you are obsessed with media coverage.

...