Trump chief-of-staff Priebus heads back to DC after Saudi visit
Senior White House official will not accompany president to Israel, Europe, will fly back ahead of budget rollout Tuesday
US President Donald Trump’s chief-of-staff Reince Priebus is returning to Washington after the president wraps up a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia.
Priebus will not accompany the president, and the rest of the entourage including daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to Jerusalem on Monday in what the White House says was not a last-minute decision.
“He was planning to come for the first stop and then head back for the budget roll out,” said White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Trump’s blueprint for the 2018 budget year is expected to be rolled out Tuesday. It includes a wave of cuts to benefit programs such as Medicaid, federal employee pensions, welfare benefits and farm subsidies. The cuts will total $1.7 trillion over 10 years from such so-called mandatory programs. The fleshed-out proposal follows up on an unpopular partial release in March that targeted the budgets of domestic agencies and foreign aid for cuts averaging 10 percent — and made lawmakers in both parties recoil.
Trump’s White House is also battling a number of scandals including revelations about the ongoing federal investigation into his campaign’s possible ties to Russia, a controversial intel leak to Russian officials involding Israeli intel and his decision to fire FBI director James Comey, who had been overseeing the Russia probe.
Reports also emerged that Trump called Comey “a nut job” and that the FBI has identified a senior White House official as a “significant person of interest” in its probe of Russian meddling.
Comey has agreed to testify publicly about Russian interference in the US elections last year.
Some Democrats have begun to discuss methods for Trump’s ouster.