In and Out: Trump selective about travel during shutdown on WTOP| WASHINGTON (AP) — Vacation jaunts and hobnobbing with global elites at a Swiss ski resort are out for President Donald Trump. Visits with troops and farmers are OK. Like some of his recent predecessors, Trump is being careful about…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vacation jaunts and hobnobbing with global elites at a Swiss ski resort are out for President Donald Trump. Visits with troops and farmers are OK.
Like some of his recent predecessors, Trump is carefully picking and choosing where he’ll travel during the partial government shutdown.
He visited with U. S. troops stationed at a military base in western Iraq the day after Christmas and flew to the U. S.-Mexico border in southern Texas last week to try to buttress his argument for billions of dollars to build a wall to stem illegal immigration, drug trafficking and crime. On Monday, Trump is scheduled to address the American Farm Bureau’s annual convention in New Orleans.
But Trump scrapped other trips that wouldn’t have played well at a time when government workers are furloughed or working without pay.
He canceled plans to spend more than two weeks at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. He also bagged a trip to a global economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, that had been set for next week, blaming “intransigence” by Democrats for his decision.
“It looks like the president is going ahead with trips that are more closely tied to official business and is avoiding trips that might have optics that are more difficult to justify during a shutdown,” said Brendan Doherty, a political scientist at the U. S. Naval Academy who tracks presidential travel.
Doherty said it wasn’t surprising that Trump would avoid his beloved Mar-a-Lago estate on Florida’s southeastern coast, which he last visited at Thanksgiving.
