EDINBURGH During the hot summer months, Abraham Lincoln frequently set up camp in the Soldiers’ Home, a presidential retreat consisting of cottages and parkland in what is now the Petworth neighborhood of northwest Washington, approximately 3 miles (5 kilometers) north of the White House.
At this family’s house in Long Branch, New Jersey, Ulysses S. Grant occasionally spent the summer, even leading horseback rides on the shore. Ronald Reagan once said that his Rancho Del Cielore, just outside of Santa Barbara, California, was where he conducted some of his best thinking.
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Donald Trump’s vacation is taking him to the Scottish shore, which is a long way from the country’s capital.
Trump’s five-day midsummer jaunta holiday is being billed by the White House as a business trip, during which the Republican president may attend a press conference and participate in interviews with American and British journalists. In separate discussions with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen, Trump also discussed trade.
Trump is staying at his properties near Aberdeen and Turnberry, where his family is building a third golf course on August 13 and owns two. Trump helped cut the ribbon on the new course on Tuesday after spending the weekend playing golf at Turnberry.
He is not the first president to visit Scotland; in 1959, more than fifty years before Trump purchased it, Dwight D. Eisenhower performed at Turnberry following a meeting with French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris. Nevertheless, none of Trump’s predecessors have built an overseas tour around advertising vacation spots that his family owns and is actively growing.
It exposes how, in spite of mounting ethical issues, Trump has used his second term to boost his family’s wealth in a number of ways, including as pushing cryptocurrency and signing international development deals.
Leonard Steinhorn, who teaches political communication and courses on American culture and the modern president at American University, stated, “You have to look at this as yet another attempt by Donald Trump to monetize his presidency.” In this instance, promoting his golf facilities through the trip as a public relations opportunity.
Presidents usually take a vacation in the United States.
Between 1933 and 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the Bahamas five times, frequently for the great fishing. In 1933, 1936, and 1939, he returned to Canada’s Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where he had spent his childhood holiday.
Reagan spoke with Caribbean leaders, warned of a Marxist threat that may spread from neighboring Grenada throughout the region, and then took a holiday in Barbados for Easter 1982.
Additionally, presidents never take a full vacation. They handle calls, get intelligence briefings, travel with a sizable retinue of staffers, and perform other tasks outside of Washington. In the United States, however, it has long been customary to kick back.
Harry S. Truman’s Little White House house in Key West, Florida, contributed to the area being a popular tourist destination. James Buchanan and Benjamin Harrison were among the presidents who paid visits to Cape May, New Jersey’s Victorian architecture.
More recently, Trump has kept Palm Beach, Florida, buoyant with frequent visits to his Mar-a-Lago resort, while Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have increased tourism on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. However, Trump’s family stands to gain the most from any tourism boost he receives from his trip to Scotland.
Trump is displaying his priorities, according to Jeffrey Engel, David Gergen, Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who noted that every president must balance politics with vacation enjoyment.”
A. He wants to play golf, B. He wants to travel countries where he has investments, and C. He wants to improve those investments. These activities were not priorities for former presidents, but they are his vacation time, Engel stated.
It’s even different from Trump’s first term, when he managed to fit property visits within more work-related travels. In November 2017, Trump visited the Pearl Harbor memorial site and then left for Asia, stopping at his resort in Hawaii to thank personnel. In 2018, he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland after playing golf at Turnberry.
Trump once criticized the notion of taking time off while in office.
Don’t go on holidays. What’s the point? According to Trump’s 2004 book Think Like a Billionaire, “you’re in the wrong job if you’re not enjoying your work.” He made a promise to stay in the White House as little as possible during his 2015 presidential campaign.
Trump even made fun of his predecessor for traveling large distances for golf, something he currently does, during a speech at an artificial intelligence gathering in Washington on Wednesday.
After discussing the carbon footprint, Obama boarded an Air Force One, a 747, and flew to Hawaii to play golf before returning, he added.
Traveling abroad or taking a presidential vacation used to be frowned upon.
Trump is hardly the first president to choose not to make vacation time public.
George Washington received backlash for promoting the presidency by going on a tour of New England. In 1797, John Adams, his successor, was criticized by some for taking a lengthy vacation to his family’s home in Quincy, Massachusetts, instead of staying in the then-capital city of Philadelphia. Following the War of 1812, James Madison spent months away from Washington.
According to the White House Historical Association, Teddy Roosevelt helped establish the modern presidential vacation in 1902 by arranging for a special train and instructing important employees to rent homes close to Sagamore Hill, his residence in Oyster Bay, New York.
Roosevelt broke the mold four years later when he became the first president to go abroad while in office. According to the New York Times, Roosevelt’s 30-day journey by yacht and battleship to inspect the Panama Canal’s construction will go against 117-year-old American customs by removing the president from the government’s authority in Washington.
Presidents’ decisions to take vacations, even abroad, have been ingrained in their political personalities in the decades that have followed.
Grant unwinded not only in New Jersey but also in Martha’s Vineyard. Sapelo Island, Georgia, was Calvin Coolidge’s destination during the 1928 Christmas season. Lyndon B. Johnson’s Texas White House was a property in the Hill Country.
Newport, Rhode Island, was Eisenhower’s vacation destination. Among other locations, John F. Kennedy visited his family’s compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Palm Springs, California. Joe Biden frequently visited Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, as well as Nantucket, Massachusetts, and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, while Richard Nixon occupied the Southern White House on Key Biscayne, Florida.
The beginning of the Gulf War in 1991 didn’t stop George H.W. Bush from taking a monthlong vacation at his family’s home in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he frequently visited. George W. Bush, his son, chose his ranch in Crawford, Texas, over a more upscale location.
There are some regions where presidential trips boost tourism more than others, but according to Engel, some Americans desire to visit the same location if the president of the United States does.
He pointed out that tourists who mimic presidential vacations are there “to demonstrate that you’re either as cool as he or she, that you share their values, or, who knows, maybe you’ll run into them.”
