For President Trump, the start of his 17-day “working vacation” at his New Jersey golf course means more of the same: He’s hard at work on tweetstorms, lambasting “phony Fake News” and the “failing NYTimes” for reporting that Mike Pence is gearing up for a presidential run of his own, and claiming that his base is “far bigger & stronger than ever before!”
Some top White House staffers are taking the opportunity to get as far away from Dodge as possible — while others in Trump’s orbit just can’t seem to break away, as Vanity Fair reports.
Kellyanne Conway has been hanging out on the beach in Ventnor, New Jersey, where she and her attorney husband have a beach house. The recent carnage of the White House press office haven’t been sitting quite so pretty: Former press secretary Sean Spicer was seen cheering on the Boston Red Sox, while vanished communications director Anthony Scaramucci was seen taking refuge on Long Island, walking into an Italian restaurant “to cheers and requests from women for photos.”
But the first daughter and son-in-law aren’t so lucky, having accompanied the president to Bedminster on Air Force One. Ivanka Instagrammed a picture of a “girls’ night” and a kiddie pajama party, and weighed in via Twitter on a “vastly improved labor market,” saying, “Americans are less likely to be laid off than at any point in at least 50 years.”
The Trump administration may look back on summer with more wistful eyes than usual, as various scales of hellfire await them in Washington this September. First and most literal, there is the North Korean nuclear threat to address, which has escalated sharply over the last week. Robert Mueller’s investigation continues to advance amid reports that a grand jury has been impanelled in DC and investigators are looking into Trump’s financial dealings. The Republicans’ tax reform initiative looks likely to stall after the failure of Obamacare repeal, and negotiations on lifting the debt ceiling look like no piece of cake. And the president still has to catch up on his homework: he has yet to nominate anyone for 354 key government positions.
