[THEHILL] President B.O. went back to his vacation on Martha's Vineyard Tuesday evening following less than 48 hours in Washington, leaving people puzzled over why he came back in the first place.
Obama's two days in Washington were mostly quiet, and concluded with the president receiving his daily national security briefing in the morning, and joining Vice President Biden to huddle with members of his economic team in the afternoon.
Administration officials have insisted for weeks that the president just wanted to return to the White House for a series of meetings, but the explanation was met with a healthy dose of skepticism, since Obama rarely interrupts his vacations.
Judicial Watch estimates the extra roundtrip cost $1.1 million. Only daughter Malia accompanied Obama back to Washington.
Speculation for why Obama returned focused around the possibility of a secret foreign leader meeting or the roll out of a new administration initiative on immigration or corporate taxes.
But no such explanation materialized.
The most unusual deviation from a normal day at the White House was Obama's dinner Monday night at Sam Kass's home. The president, joined by deputy chief of staff Anita Breckenridge, spent nearly five hours at the White House chef's Dupont Circle duplex apartment.
It's possible that the party may have been a celebration of Kass's impending nuptials to MSNBC host Alex Wagner. The couple announced their engagement last September. But the White House provided no details of the meal.
White House officials have bristled at repeated questions over the decision, even as the story has popcorned across the Internet.
"WH claimed Obama can do everything on the Vineyard, so why did he need to fly back to WH to meet with staff?" tweeted Joseph Curl, a Washington Times columnist and editor of the Drudge Report. "So wait, both Obama AND Holder flew from the Vineyard to DC so Holder could update Obama on Ferguson? Something very fishy going on here."