Donald Trump shortens Florida vacation and returns to the White House earlier

President Donald Trump will shorten his Florida vacation and return to Washington on Thursday, a day earlier than expected, for reasons the White House did not explain.

The White House announced the abrupt change to the president’s calendar Wednesday night, hours after Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley said he will raise objections next week when Congress meets to affirm the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. in the November elections.

It is a futile attempt to stay in power that Trump has been pushing after the failure of dozens of legal challenges to the election result by his campaign, including in the Supreme Court.

The time change also means Trump will miss the glitzy New Years Eve party held annually at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.

Neither Trump nor the White House explained why he decided to shorten a vacation that was expected to end on Friday.

Trump, accompanied by his wife, Melania, arrived at their Mar-a-Lago home after dark on December 23 and spent almost every vacation focused on the futile attempt to reverse the election he lost to Biden. That includes the effort for Republican lawmakers to challenge the vote when Congress meets Jan. 6 to affirm Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College victory.

A group of Republicans in the Democratic-controlled House had already said they would object on Trump’s behalf during the Jan.6 electoral vote count. They needed at least one senator to join them in forcing votes in both houses, and Hawley stepped forward.

Republican objections, however, will not prevent Biden from being sworn in as president on January 20 and California Sen. Kamala Harris, a black woman of South Asian descent, from becoming vice president.

During his vacation, Trump also criticized Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and other state election officials almost daily on Twitter for their loss to Biden in that state.

While he has remained focused on the effort to stay in power, Trump has remained mum about major events over the holidays, including a Christmas Day bombing in Nashville, Tennessee, the discovery in California and Colorado of a new, apparently more contagious variant of the coronavirus, and the death on Tuesday of Republican Representative-elect Luke Letlow of Louisiana from complications from Covid-19.

Since losing the election and starting a campaign to overturn the result, the usually talkative Trump has avoided getting involved with reporters, even those who accompanied him to Florida. He went so far as to exclude them from his Christmas Day comments to American troops, which is the kind of event the White House normally opens for news coverage.

Before leaving Washington, Trump surprised the Capitol by opposing spending, largely requested by his own administration, on a government funding bill that had been combined with a new round of needed coronavirus relief that included payments of $ 600 for most people.

Trump jeopardized financial aid and flirted with the government shutdown scheduled for last Tuesday by hinting that he would not sign the broad legislation unless lawmakers raised payments to $ 2,000, a sum that most Democrats and some are seeking. republicans.

Trump finally signed the bill on Sunday night after several days of uncertainty in exchange for Congressional votes on his demands. He also wants Congress to lift certain protections for social media companies and investigate their baseless claims of election fraud.

Former Attorney General William Barr and other administration officials have said they saw no evidence of fraud on a massive enough scale to have changed the outcome of the election.

The House voted this week to increase payments, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell almost closed the door Wednesday when he declared that Congress had provided enough pandemic aid. McConnell blocked attempts by Democrats to force a vote in that chamber on the higher payouts Trump sought.

– AP