Splashing out – the Trump courtiers who live like royalty

“When it comes to frivolous spending on the government dime while the populace is told to make sacrifices, Marie Antoinette was a rank amateur,” said Helaine Olen in The Washington Post. President Trump’s billionaire-filled cabinet has been showing how it’s really done, with at least five members now mired in federal investigations into their taxpayer-funded splurges. Take Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin: he has reportedly squandered almost $1m on eight trips on military aircraft. Then there’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson, said Becket Adams in the Washington Examiner – he attempted to spend $31,000 on a dining room set for his office. Meanwhile, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt has been flying first class with a bunch of bodyguards to avoid being heckled by the masses. And Interior Department head Ryan Zinke, who insists on a ceremonial flag being raised whenever he’s at headquarters, was going to spend $139,000 on new double doors for his office. So much for Trump’s pledge to “drain the Washington swamp”.

The worst of it, said Renée Graham in The Boston Globe, is that while the members of Trump’s cabinet carry on like royalty, their agencies’ funding and missions are being gutted. Trump’s 2019 budget proposes a 25% cut to the EPA and a 14% cut to HUD, including less funding for affordable housing. That didn’t stop a Carson underling at HUD from griping that “$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair”. Where did these grifters learn such gall? From the Sun King himself. Trump is shamelessly profiting from his presidency. US government and foreign officials have spent millions of dollars at Trump-branded properties, while the president’s frequent trips to his Mar-a-lago resort have reportedly cost taxpayers at least $6.6m in airfare alone.

Even Trump has been irritated by coverage of his cabinet’s profligate ways, said Jonathan Swan on Axios.com. Four cabinet-level officials were recently summoned to the White House for a dressing-down, according to CNN. If Trump cares at all about his aides’ outrageous bilking of the taxpayers, said The Weekly Standard, he will have to set an example by firing a few of them. This, after all, is the president who declared in his inaugural address: “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.” Quite. So do something about it.