CAMP DAVID, Md. (AP) — President Donald Trump took Friday's Cabinet meeting on the road to the Camp David retreat in Maryland, using the historic rustic backdrop to boast of his administration's achievements while seizing on a migrant crisis in Spain to make his case for why voters should choose Republicans in the midterm elections.
Trump began the meeting by noting it was “something very unique.”
“It's Camp David, and this room is a very, very special
room,” Trump said, as the White House spent Friday morning highlighting that the meeting was the first televised Cabinet meeting at the storied presidential retreat.
He then segued into his usual talking points about the economy, the border and Iran — but then referred to the recent surge of migrants into Cueta, a tiny territory of Spain, suggesting that the moment should be taken as a warning to voters ahead of the U.S. midterms.
“You know I saw Spain yesterday, and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It looks like an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people,” Trump said. “And that same thing is going to happen to us if the Republicans don’t get elected. Except worse, much bigger.”
Other Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, also spoke before Trump fielded questions from journalists, who left the meeting after nearly an hour.
It was the first Cabinet meeting at Camp David in Trump's second term after an earlier attempt in May was scuttled because of bad weather. During his first term, Trump held a Cabinet meeting at the retreat.
The public portion of Trump's Cabinet meetings has lasted as long as three hours, with the president letting everyone at the table update him on their departments or agencies — with added praise for him personally and his leadership thrown in. In a departure from other presidents, he has allowed the news media to stay for the duration of the meetings, a move that Leavitt has said proves his commitment to transparency.
More recently, however, Trump has commented on how lengthy the meetings have become. He has begun urging speakers to keep their comments brief, and he has limited the number of oral reports.
“Everybody around here has got a lot to say. But we did that once, and it lasted for like four or five hours. It was a little much,” Trump said at the May meeting.
Camp David was established in 1942 during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency and has been used by every president since.
Roosevelt had enjoyed relaxing aboard a presidential yacht, but the military and the U.S. Secret Service began to worry about his safety on open water during World War II. As a result, Roosevelt asked the National Park Service to find sites within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the White House that he could use for rest.
He chose what is now known as Camp David. He gave it the original name of Shangri-La, from James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon.” President Dwight Eisenhower renamed it Camp David, after his grandson and father.
Trump spent more weekends at the retreat in his first term but has visited sparingly in his second, most recently in June for Father’s Day.
In 2019, during his first term, Trump announced on social media that he had canceled a secret weekend meeting at Camp David with Taliban and Afghanistan leaders — scheduled for just days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — after a bombing in the capital of Kabul killed a dozen people, including a U.S. soldier.
Presidents throughout history have turned to Camp David when they needed security and privacy for sensitive diplomatic talks with foreign leaders. Jimmy Carter took the leaders of Egypt and Israel there in 1978 for talks that produced the Camp David Accords, a peace agreement between the two countries.
Camp David is also where Carter huddled in 1979 with representatives of a cross-section of American society. He later delivered a nationally televised speech on energy policy that became known as the “malaise” speech — even though he never said the word.
The camp's primary purpose is to provide presidents a place to rest, relax and recharge.
The 180-acre (73-hectare) retreat, which is run by the Navy and guarded by Marines, has a cabin named Aspen that’s reserved for the president, plus about a dozen other cabins for guests. A main lodge has conference rooms, a dining room and an office for the president.
Guests can take advantage of a range of indoor and outdoor amenities, including a fitness center, a bowling alley, a movie theater, a heated swimming pool and tennis and basketball courts. A chapel offers religious services.
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Superville and Kim reported from Washington.
