Berkeley Heights (USA) (AFP)

Officially, Donald Trump has been on vacation since last Friday, but between fundraising parties, election rallies and inevitable tweets and retweets, the bubbling president does not pass their toes in fan.

"It's never a holiday," the septuagenarian warned before leaving the White House for 10 days at his luxurious golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey.

"I like to work, I would rather be here," he had insisted between the oval walls of his office, faithful to the image of hyperactive businessman he likes to put forward.

The New Yorker has in any case kept his word. Barely out of Washington, he raised $ 12 million Friday night for his re-election campaign at a fundraising party.

He made a return trip to Pennsylvania on Tuesday for an unbridled speech to workers at a Shell petrochemical plant, and will hold a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Thursday.

On Twitter too, Donald Trump shows no sign of relaxation, relaying sometimes conspiracy theories and videos of elephants or speaking as usual on the major business of the country.

- Permanent Campaign -

Even when he plays golf, the 45th president of the United States is reminded of his status as commander-in-chief: a soldier is never far away with the briefcase containing the nuclear codes.

Counselors and experts are at all times at his disposal, when they are not at his side among the battalion of bodyguards and other police deployed around the clock around his person.

His predecessors have obviously been subjected to the same treatment.

Barack Obama loved to return to Hawaii, where he was born, or to relax, like Bill Clinton before him, on Martha's Vineyard, near Boston.

But all had to stay on the war footing.

Ronald Reagan's Californian vacation came to an end in 1983 when the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Airlines plane.

Donald Trump is not content to react to the news. His presidential style goes through an omnipresence in the media and the summer does not change anything.

"This man is different," says James Thurber, American University of Washington. "He never stops politics, he uses these holidays to hold meetings".

"He is constantly campaigning and using his rhetoric to mobilize his base and set the tone in the media," says the political expert. "It's his strategy, but it's also something that is imbued in his personality, he has a lot of ego to satisfy."

- In Florida winter -

Tell me where you go on vacation and I'll tell you who you are: American presidents, like any summer vacationer, are no exception.

Ulysses S. Grant, was the first to appreciate the insular ambiance of Martha's Vineyard, amidst the rich and influential elites.

George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan preferred to find their roots and the tranquility of their ranches in the open spaces of Texas and California. John F. Kennedy and George HW Bush escaped the damp conditions of Washington by traveling to the northeastern part of the country, Massachusetts and Maine.

As a good billionaire, Donald Trump does not really taste the crowds on the coast.

He may have chosen one of the most mocked states in the country, New Jersey, as a summer destination, but he does not see much of it at all, cloistered in his golf club, where membership costs around $ 350,000.

The former real estate mogul spends his non-winter vacations in another of his golf complexes, in Mar-A-Lago, under the Florida sun.

The general public generally has no idea what is happening behind the security cordon. But one thing is certain: when the White House agenda is empty, Donald Trump always finds something to fill it.

© 2019 AFP