President Trump went on vacation — and the country went to hell.
Monday marks the end of Trump’s 17-day “working vacation,” which he split between his New Jersey golf course, Camp David and Trump Tower.
But the vacation provided no relief — for Trump, his allies, his opponents or his nation.
It says a lot about the Trump administration that even during a 17-day vacation, the President managed to whip up a whirl of scandals and rivalries, brewing a storm for him to walk into immediately upon his return to Washington.
Here are some of the memories from Trump’s trip:
1. Trump escalated the threat of a nuclear war with North Korea, trading warnings with its paranoid leader Kim Jong Un for more than a week straight. Trump improvised a threat that North Korea would face “fire and fury” for its nuclear tests, stunning his advisers who had hoped for a more diplomatic approach. North Korea said it was going to bomb the U.S. territory of Guam, and Trump said he was ready to unleash destruction if it did — but nothing ever happened.
2. In another set of unplanned remarks, Trump said he would not rule out military action in the crisis-stricken Venezuela, hinting out of the blue at another possible foreign conflict.
3. Trump unleashed public attacks on four prominent Republican senators — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, who is battling a brain tumor.
4. Trump also unloaded on Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), tweeting about him four times over several hours after getting enraged by an interview Blumenthal gave to CNN.
5. Trump hesitated to call out the white supremacists and neo-Nazis leading a hate rally in Charlottesville, Va., which led to the death of protester Heather Heyer. Trump said “many sides” were to blame for the chaos, not singling any of the hate groups. He then begrudgingly issued a stronger denouncement days later, only to reverse himself in a contentious Trump Tower press conference, where he said “both sides” were to blame for the rally’s violence. At least 10 of the Senate’s 52 Republicans condemned Trump’s tepid remarks.
6. After another hate rally and counter-protest erupted in Boston, Trump tried to support the protests on Twitter — without proofreading. He posted two tweets in which he misspelled “heal” as “heel” twice in each tweet. He only got it right after his third try, writing: “Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before!”
7. After CEOs fled from two of Trump’s business advisory committees — the Manufacturing Council and the Strategy and Policy Forum — Trump announced on Twitter that he would simply disband the two groups, shutting off some of his most important ties to business leaders working with his administration.
8. Trump fired his chief strategist Steve Bannon, who served as his campaign manager in the final stretch of the 2016 race. Bannon immediately returned to running Breitbart News and said in an interview that Trump’s administration is the most divided in American history.
9. Trump did not announce any action to help pass tax reform or a government spending bill, two of the most important congressional priorities for September.
10. Congress members on both sides of the aisle publicly questioned Trump’s mental health, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would require Trump to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
11. After a terror attack in Barcelona claimed 13 lives, Trump approvingly tweeted about a false story of U.S. Army General John Pershing killing Muslims with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. “Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” Trump wrote.
12. Meanwhile, Trump never publicly commented on the bombing of a Minnesota mosque, which Gov. Mark Dayton called “an act of terrorism.” Trump’s deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka said Trump kept quiet because the attack might have been a false hate crime “propagated by the left.” There is no evidence suggesting this.
13. Trump thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for cutting 755 U.S. diplomatic positions as punishment for a congressional bill ordering Russian sanctions. Trump reasoned that Putin helped the American government “cut down our payroll.”
14. Through it all, pictures kept popping up online of Trump golfing at his New Jersey course. By the end of the vacation, Trump has played golf nearly a quarter of the days he has been President.