By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, July 31 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump convenes a Cabinet meeting on Friday at his Camp David retreat as he grapples with how to resolve his war against Iran and bring down gasoline prices that are threatening Republicans in November midterm elections.
Unlike some past presidents, Trump has largely stayed away from the mountaintop presidential redoubt in western Maryland, preferring to spend time at his golf resorts when not at the White House. This will be his third trip to Camp David in his second term.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a briefing last week that this would be the 13th Cabinet meeting of Trump’s second term and that it would be “a lot of fun and something different for the cabinet to experience together.”
The agenda for the meeting will likely focus heavily on foreign policy. Trump is engaged in tit-for-tat strikes against Iranian targets with no end in sight to a conflict that the president initially projected would last just a few weeks but is now five months old.
The war has sent gasoline prices spiraling and taken a toll on his standing. This week, a Reuters-Ipsos poll found just one in three Americans support the war, the lowest reading in the poll since the conflict’s early days.
The impact of the war on the U.S. economy is causing heartburn among Republicans who are looking uneasily ahead to November, when Democrats will seek to break their control of the U.S. Congress.
Trump’s Cabinet meetings tend to run long – well over an hour – as each Cabinet secretary offers an update on activities in their departments, mixed with plenty of praise for the president.
After the meeting, Trump is scheduled to go to his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club for the weekend.
(Reporting By Steve Holland, editing by Ross Colvin and Sanjeev Miglani)
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