Trump's aides reportedly expect his August vacation will center around 'golf, cable news, and Twitter'

(Image credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

published 9 August 2019

President Trump is leaving the White House on Friday for a 10-day August holiday, to be spent mostly at the golf resort he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey. Trump will likely hold some official events during his annual August vacation, and he's expected to attend two high-dollar fundraisers on Friday in New York's the Hamptons, raking in an estimated $10 million at the houses of wealthy real estate developers Stephen Ross and Joe Farrell.

"Trump has long bristled at the term 'vacation,'" The Associated Press reports, and he will be "confronting a storm of crises, at home and abroad, that could set the course for his upcoming re-election bid," including the China trade war, festering tensions with North Korea and Iran, and the fallout from last weekend's back-to-back mass shootings in Ohio and Texas, when Trump was also at this Bedminster club. "But aides say his attention will be focused on golf, cable news, and Twitter," AP reports. "They often worry about the scattershot outbursts — such as his 'fire and fury' to North Korea in 2017 — that can emerge when Trump escapes Washington and has more access to his friends and less to his staff."

Trump doesn't appear to share their concerns, according to former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci. "He doesn't think he is facing any challenges. His attitude is, 'The economy is doing great, I am putting the hammer down on China, the rest is just noise,'" Scaramucci told AP. "The media is against him, his supporters are for him, and the Democrats don't seem like a threat. ... He's going on vacation feeling smug."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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