President Barack Obama may be taking heat from Republicans for going on a two-week summer vacation, but at least he can count on support from Mayor Bloomberg.
"Look, everybody deserves a vacation, and he's gotta decide what's right and set his own schedule, and I'll leave that to him," Bloomberg said at a news conference Thursday.
Bloomberg added, "The guy works pretty hard, he has a right of vacation. And incidentally, the phones work from Martha's Vineyard so he's not exactly out of touch."
It was during the president’s vacation on Martha’s Vineyard last summer that Bloomberg was invited to play golf. After that outing, Bloomberg was quoted by Rupert Murdoch as saying Obama was the “most arrogant man” he had ever met.
Unsurprisingly, he has not been invited back, though he may have been fishing for a do-over Thursday.
"If he called [to play golf on the Vineyard], would I? Sure," he said. "You always play golf with the president."
The billionaire mayor said his last real extended vacation was over 10 years ago, although he is known to regularly leave town on weekends to escape to one of his vacation homes. Ever since he took office in 2002, he has refused to say when he leaves town.
Obama has taken 38 vacation days so far in his term as president. His predecessor George W. Bush had taken 102 days at the same point in his first term.
