Talking points
Trump’s Cabinet: The Swamp lives
“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 the self-indulgent French queen how it’s done, with at least five members now mired in federal investigations involving taxpayer-funded splurges. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has reportedly squandered almost $1 million on eight trips on military aircraft. “Then there’s Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson,” said Becket Adams in WashingtonExaminer.com, who attempted to spend $31,000—“that’s a 31 followed by three zeroes”—on a dining room set for his office. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt has been flying first class with a squadron of bodyguards so that he can avoid being heckled by the unwashed masses; Interior Department head Ryan Zinke, who insists that a ceremonial flag be raised whenever he’s in headquarters, spent $139,000 on the construction of a “Secretary’s Door” for his office. “‘Drain the swamp’ indeed.”
This is “the new ‘Let them eat cake,’” said Renée Graham in The Boston Globe. While the members of Trump’s Champagne Cabinet carry on like royalty, their agencies’ funding and missions are being gutted. Trump’s 2019 budget proposes a 25 percent cut to the EPA and a 14 percent cut to HUD, including less funding for affordable housing. That didn’t stop a Carson underling 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, who is shamelessly profiting from his presidency. U.S. government and foreign officials have spent millions of dollars at Trump-branded properties, while the president’s frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago have cost taxpayers at least “$6.6 million in airfare alone.”
Even Trump has been irritated by news coverage of his Cabinet’s splurges, said Jonathan Swan in Axios.com. Four Cabinet-level officials were last week summoned to the White House for a dressing-down, CNN reported. If Trump cares at all about his aides’ outrageous bilking of the taxpayers, said WeeklyStandard.com in an editorial, he will set an example by firing a few of them. This, after all, is the president who said 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.”