What's a president to do during a federal government shut down? There are only so many frames of bowling on Harry Truman's personal alley you can get through before your Secret Service goons start getting tennis elbow. Fortunately, Donald Trump found a useful diversion: leading tours of the White House.

According to the Washington Post, Trump killed time during the 35-day shutdown by leading visitors to the White House on a tour, taking special care to respect the history of this seat of American power and influence by attacking other presidents and making up any old bollocks as he went.

During one turn around the building with a TV anchor, Trump reportedly gestured into a room and said: "I'm told this is where Bill and Monica..." At that point Trump does a passable Kenneth Williams impression, while aides told the Post that "the subject often leads to lengthy, sometimes crass conversations".

"The president has also claimed to guests, without evidence, that his private dining room off the Oval Office was in 'rough shape' and had a hole in the wall when he came into the West Wing and that President Barack Obama used it to watch sports."

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"He just sat in here and watched basketball all day," Trump reportedly told one recent group. A former Obama employee said that there was never a hole in the wall, and that Obama never watched any sports in that room. Nevertheless, Trump told the group that he'd upgraded the TV in there.

Elsewhere, he's a big fan of showing off heirlooms like the Louisiana land purchase, the Bill of Rights and the Gettysburg Address, as well as offering his thoughts on historic presidents like slave-owning Native American oppressor Andrew Jackson (good) and Union general Ulysses S Grant ("not so good").

The Post also says Trump has claimed that tour groups have cried when he's showed them the Oval Office, overcome by a mixture of awe, respect and a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction to bullshit.

This is all pretty unusual behaviour compared to recent presidents: Obama kept White House tours to a select few close friends rather than officials, and George W Bush almost completely avoided them. Not Trump, though. "He's very restless and doesn’t like desk work," presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told the Post. "He’d rather roam around and BS with people than hunker down."

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