Despite her husband’s frequent attacks on Michelle Obama’s travel expenses, Melania Trump spent $675,000 on travel in three months, double what Mrs. Obama would spend in an entire year when she was First Lady.
Military records obtained by The Wall Street Journal have just revealed that Mrs. Trump took 21 flights on Air Force jets when she was commuting between New York and D.C., until she moved to the White House halfway through 2017 — an unprecedented arrangement in First Family history.
Meanwhile, Trump, who repeatedly criticized President Obama for playing golf and his family for going on vacation, has spent a third of his presidency on vacation.
In his first year as president, Trump outpaced Obama in the amount of time he spent on the green, our Trump Golf Tracker shows. https://t.co/1UUri7dkl8 pic.twitter.com/TTCQvVD0PF
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) January 20, 2018
According to the website trumpgolfcount.com, travel and expenses related to Trump’s golf outings have cost American taxpayers $50 million.
Courtesy of trumpgolfcount.com
Adding insult to injury, Trump’s Cabinet has faced sharp criticism for their inappropriate use of taxpayer-funded travel — most notably Health Secretary Tom Price, who was forced to resign after racking up more than $1 million in military and private flights in only a few months.
In addition to the monumental taxpayer expense, the excessive flights unnecessarily harm the environment. According to the WSJ:
27 flights were made without passengers while jets flew back and forth to Trump family residences in New York and Palm Beach, and then back to Joint Base Andrews, the records released to the Journal show . . . Those jets cost $10,075 an hour to fly, according to the Defense Department schedule of hourly rates.
Interestingly (and expensively), one empty Air Force jet departed D.C. and flew to New York, where Melania boarded it and flew to Mar-a-Lago. After Donald landed separately in Air Force One, Melania’s plane flew back empty to D.C.
The First Lady’s most expensive trip amounted to a whopping $106,627, with an hourly rate of $16,000.
Trumpian excesses recently received much-deserved satire in the form of an offer to install a solid-gold toilet from the Guggenheim museum in New York.
The “Let them eat cake” administration makes no bones about living high on the hog on the taxpayers’ dime, like, say, Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
With Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller investigating Trump’s conspiracy with Russia to undermine American democracy, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and other high crimes — and with the mid-term elections coming up this year — Donald “Louis XIV” Trump may soon be deposed. We must make it so.
Follow Lucia Brawley on Twitter and at luciabrawley.com.
