With Trump on Vacation, a Sprucing Up for the West Wing<br />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<br />summer vacation, a White House employee switched off the air-conditioning in the West Wing to turn the area officially into a construction zone.<br />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<br />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.”<br />No such plan has been enacted.<br />By then, senior White House officials — including Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, top advisers, lawyers<br />and spokespeople — had already cleared out to decamp to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door.<br />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<br />that includes replacing the air-conditioning and heating system and installing new cables and wires, fresh paint and new carpets.<br />“I doubt that you would want to come to work on a hot summer day when the air-conditioning wasn’t working,” Lindsay Walters,<br />the deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday, as the temperature on the White House lawn reached 90 degrees.
