Congress still AWOL.
Via Daily Mail:
Incoming White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney says that President Trump will remain in Washington until the end of year, ending speculation that he could make a break for Mar-a-Lago amid the partial government shutdown.
Trump typically spends his New Year’s holiday at the lavish estate he owns in Palm Beach.
He’ll remain in D.C. through next week, Mulvaney said Friday on ‘Fox and Friends,’ as he declared Trump’s trip to Florida ‘cancelled’ for the upcoming holiday just as it was for Christmas.
‘He’s staying in Washington, D.C. over New Years,’ Mulvaney said. ‘He’s cancelled his plans for Christmas, now he cancelled his plans for New Year’s.’
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders later said that Trump has ‘no plans as of now’ to go to Mar-a-Lago at all in the next few days.
The shutdown has kept President Trump in Washington for the past week, aside from a secret trip to pump up the troops in Iraq.
Mulvaney claimed Friday that Trump, who’d spent the morning tweeting about his border wall, has been following the shutdown news on an almost ‘minute-by-minute basis,’ as well as the manhunt for an illegal immigrant suspected of killing a cop in California.
He called the shooting a ‘heartbreaking’ story and said it’s ‘one of the reasons that the president is still here fighting for border security.’
First lady Melania Trump had went on to Florida without her husband. She returned to Washington to be with him on Christmas Day and participate in his covert trip abroad.
She was back in Florida on Friday and was expected to spend the New Year’s holiday there, too, as she’d already left their son Barron to come back to the White House once.
Her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham confirmed to DailyMail.com, ‘She is back in a Florida with her son.’