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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — The moment President Trump left Washington aboard Air Force One on Friday, bound for the New Jersey golf course where he will spend his summer vacation, a White House employee switched off the air-conditioning in the West Wing to turn the area officially into a construction zone. By then, senior White House officials — including Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, top advisers, lawyers and spokespeople — had already cleared out to decamp to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door. That French Second Empire-style building will be their temporary office while government workers undertake a major West Wing renovation — a roughly two-week, $3.4 million overhaul that includes replacing the air-conditioning and heating system and installing new cables and wires, fresh paint and new carpets. Mr. Trump’s departure from the steamy capital marked the start of the project, and a handy excuse for the president to escape northward to the relatively cooler temperatures of his Bedminster, N.J., property. “I doubt that you would want to come to work on a hot summer day when the air-conditioning wasn’t working,” Lindsay Walters, the deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday, as the temperature on the White House lawn reached 90 degrees. Presidents routinely leave Washington during August for a couple of weeks of downtime with their families. George W. Bush spent most of the month at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., and Barack Obama and Bill Clinton favored Ma... Link to the full article to read more