With Trump on Vacation, a Sprucing Up for the West Wing
WASHINGTON — The moment President Trump left Washington aboard Air Force One on Friday, bound for the New Jersey golf course where he will spend his
summer vacation, a White House employee switched off the air-conditioning in the West Wing to turn the area officially into a construction zone.
The Democratic National Committee issued a news release in the hours before Air Force One left Washington on Friday headlined “Trump’s Vacation Hypocrisy,” detailing years of criticism
that Mr. Trump aimed at Mr. Obama for taking time off, and this statement from the president just two weeks ago: “Frankly, I don’t think we should leave town unless we have a health insurance plan.”
No such plan has been enacted.
By then, senior White House officials — including Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, top advisers, lawyers
and spokespeople — had already cleared out to decamp to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door.
That French Second Empire-style building will be their temporary office while government workers undertake a major West Wing renovation — a roughly two-week, $3.4 million overhaul
that includes replacing the air-conditioning and heating system and installing new cables and wires, fresh paint and new carpets.
“I doubt that you would want to come to work on a hot summer day when the air-conditioning wasn’t working,” Lindsay Walters,
the deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday, as the temperature on the White House lawn reached 90 degrees.
