over the last couple days. i spent christmas eve and christmas day at the white house. and it was a strange environment there. granted every part of the federal government goes through a skeleton crew over the holidays. but the christmas scene at the white house was particularly strange. you had the president making that point to even tweet about how alone he was with his parenthetical poor me with his familial advisers, ivanka and jared kushner already in mar-a-lago on vacation, the first lady on the way back. and he s had these pop-up meetings he was tweeting about that we could never confirm. a meeting on north korea with a picture of himself at the resolute desk. we never got any background information on that from the white house. why is the president having the meeting on christmas eve about north korea, a threat he says is no longer a threat. talking about building 115 miles of border wall that is still, to this day, not been clarified by anyone in the white house where that w
junior might be in some trouble as well. how obsessed, concerned is the president with the mueller investigation? really obsesses with it and the fact he s sort of on vacation now, although the white house doesn t want to call it vacation in bedminster, even more time to watch television and weighing in on that. people have been asking me also, why is seems like the escalation. an escalation between the media and the president in the last few weeks and that s maybe why as well. he likes to choose a scapegoat. often the media or somebody else when really upset about something and this is likely one of the things really on his mind. what was discussed during his hour-long meeting in helsinki last month with putin, although, again, coming from moscow. a document obtained by politico, putin presented president trump with a series of requests including a proposal to hold new talks on nuclear arms controls and prohibiting weapons in space. the document purportedly a page
the level of optimism you have now as opposed to what you had six months ago? to some extent, yes. because a lot of tax cuts have not been fully realized by people yet. we re only six months in. so, they have had some tax reductions in their withholdings. but, for the most part, people haven t really seen it yet. they will, though. and as that happens, i think we are going to see continued growth. to a large extent because people have more money to spend. businesses, therefore, respond by making investments in equipment and people and so forth. steve: and, of course, you are in the banking business and you love all that stuff. jim engel the ceo of aquest that joining us from boston where is he kind of on vacation. jim, thank you for joining us live. thank you so much for having me. i appreciate it. steve: you betcha. backlash growing over this virginia restaurant that refused to serve sarah huckabee sanders.
prevagen. the name to remember. this happened. this was reported while i was away on vacation. i will admit to being slightly out of it. deliberately. while on vacation. that s what vacation s all about. look at me not reading the news. even still, when i read this thing that came out on friday, it did not make any sense to me then. and since friday, it has been further reported out, now it really doesn t make any sense to me. and i would like it to make sense. we re going to try to figure it out. okay. on friday, i was on a fishing boat. politico.com reported that two unnamed staffers from the intelligence committee in the house turned up in england. they turned up in london. politico reported specifically that they turned up at the offices of the lawyer of christopher steele.
white house correspondent mark noeler, bush made 77 trips to his crawford ranch over the course of his eight years in office. bush, like many other presidents, argued getting out of the white house bubble was a good thing. life is a series of contrasts, and i like it here a lot. i really do. and i m in my element here. we really like it. but i also like, you know i wouldn t have run for president if i didn t like the challenge. reporter: president obama faced similar criticism as he embarked on annual trips to martha s vineyard or hawaii. now i m going to go on vacation. mahalo. reporter: and now as president trump heads out on his first summer vacation, he ll likely be on the receiving end of those same critiques he made before taking office. i love working. i m not a vacation guy. right, like obama. and despite his promise to not vacation all that much,