Day 27-31: Hey Big Spender
As the façade of his administration is slowly starting to crumble, President Trump has been giving his agenda a clearer shape in the past few days. Unprecedented (unpresidented?) changes are coming to the White House, and it’s going to be fascinating to see how far Trump can stray from the norms of the job.
@realDonaldTrump spelling is hard. pic.twitter.com/OfTHwMtBLB
— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) December 17, 2016
This week, the White House budget office released a list of government-funded programs on the chopping block for the first national budget under Trump, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, and AmeriCorps, which has given out more than $2 billion in financial aid to college students. Stressing the importance of slashing spending, the administration failed to state the caveat that most of these programs cost less than $500 million annually, basically nothing next to the massive U.S. budget of about $4 trillion. In a tweet on Saturday, Trump referred to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida as the “Southern White House,” which, readers should note, is plainly false and lets him line his own pockets by using the office of the presidency for personal gain. And, of course, the price to join the resort (and gain access to the leader of the free world) has since doubled to $200,000.
Will be having many meetings this weekend at The Southern White House. Big 5:00 P.M. speech in Melbourne, Florida. A lot to talk about! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2017
Back in the New York City apartment that houses Melania and Barron Trump, emotions are running high. The First Lady is reportedly “miserable” in her new role, sequestering herself in Trump Tower. It turns out that even for her, the spotlight that comes with being married to the president is too much.
Some of the biggest news this week is also the most outrageous. In just a month, Donald Trump has cost taxpayers over $15 million dollars. In four years, that figure might balloon into the hundreds of millions of dollars, a far cry from the $97 million that the Obama family cost in eight years. Melania’s New York apartment alone costs taxpayers $500,000 per day, which could reach $183 million per year, despite the fact that she could live in the White House for, you know, free.