The White House insisted on Wednesday that President Donald Trump had a “full schedule” of phone calls and meetings for the day, barely an hour before Trump arrived at a nearby golf course he owns, the Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Washington Post pool reporter Jenna Johnson sent out her first dispatch from West Palm Beach at 7:57 a.m. ET on Wednesday: The President had already been briefed on a Navy plane crash, she wrote, and White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters had told reporters that Trump “plans to make a number of calls his week, especially related to tax reform.”
“Otherwise, she expects a ‘low-key day,’” Johnson wrote, quoting Walters. “She is checking to see if the White House would like to add any context or additional information to the President’s tweets this morning.”
Ten minutes later, Johnson issued a correction: “While the White House communications staff expects the press pool to have a ‘low-key day,’ the President will NOT have a low-key day and has a full schedule of meetings and phone calls.”
Will be having meetings and working the phones from the Winter White House in Florida (Mar-a-Lago). Stock Market hit new Record High yesterday – $5.5 trillion gain since E. Many companies coming back to the U.S. Military building up and getting very strong.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2017
Trump appeared to contradict his communications staff an hour later.
“At 9:26 AM the motorcade arrived at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach,” another pooler, the USA Today Network’s Ali Schmitz, wrote. “The pool will be holding at a public library across the street.”
Schmitz added: “The pool has not seen POTUS this morning.”
It’s not clear what the President is up to, nor whether he’s actually playing golf at the course he owns. As the Post’s Philip Bump noted: “He’s probably played golf 60 times, once every 5.1 days. We say ‘probably’ because Trump doesn’t like to admit when he’s playing golf, again because he wants to give the impression that he’s always working.”
The President’s official public schedule for Wednesday, emailed to reporters Tuesday night, was bare.
7:15AM Out-of-Town Travel Pool Call Time
No public events scheduled