Trump is going home. Big deal. Members of Congress fly home almost every weekend. Long distance commuting by our political elites has been growing for decades. We can discuss whether its a good thing (get them out of the DC bubble and back home) or a bad thing (a waste of taxpayers' money), but it's not a new thing.
This story usually is reported as an exercise in partisan sniping, with figures inflected for effect. It's a bit complicated when you get down into the weeds. No one objects to a working trip with a crowded itinerary. Questions arise when working trips become junkets, with a few scattered official meetings, often vanishingly trivial, to lend cover to visits to ritzy locations. The same thing happens when presidents abuse official travel to attend political events. Then again, presidents do take vacations, and no one objects in moderation. As far as I'm concerned, presidents going back home is in another category altogether, and I don't object to it.
In the days of modern jet air travel, which is the relevant era to consider: LBJ liked to get back to the ranch, as did Reagan and Bush 43. Bush 41 retreated to Kennebunkport when he could. Nixon was not a wealthy man and I don't recall if he kept a private home when he was in the White House, but he liked to get back to California and famously hung out with his buddy Bebe Rebozo in Florida. I don't remember how often Jimmy Carter got back to Plains, but like Nixon, Carter did not live ostentatiously and I don't remember any controversy about his travels.
The two presidents that stick out are Clinton and Obama. The Clintons, of course, did not own a home, having gotten used to the Governor's Mansion and then the White House, but they sure liked to travel. Obama is an oddity because he had a very nice home in Chicago, but seemed to have very little interest in getting back. Most presidents have been very attached to their roots. Of course, for Obama, "roots" seemed to mean Hawaii, not Chicago. But like the Clintons, the Obamas were excessively fond of resort destinations.
The left will always try to equate Reagan and Bush going back to the ranch and chopping wood, when they didn't just go to Camp David, to the Clintons and Obamas jetting around the world to exotic locations at the drop of a hat. It's an old game, and tiresome.
Pelosi flew home every weekend to CA from DC on a 757.
She was only the Speaker of the House.
Trump works in DC, on the plane, at Mar-A-Lago, on the plane back.
Money well spent.
Love that he will be at Boeing in South Carolina today, right after the machinists voted to reject the union.