Remember Freedom 250? You are forgiven if you’ve already forgotten all the activities that were supposed to celebrate America, but pretty much no one attended because they were so tacky and low-rent. But hey, at least you’re apparently still paying for them!
Wait, what?
Yep. Despite all the explanations that “Freedom 250” was separate from the official “America 250” celebrations, and that the former was totally paid for by President Donald Trump’s Big Bribe Pals, a Freedom of Information Act request suggests that taxpayers are on the hook for a bunch of Freedom 250 events. Color us surprised.
The FOIA request was submitted by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonpartisan watchdog group, and the numbers are shocking.
Let’s do some math. The cost of the Great American State Fair, the Patriot Games, and Fourth of July celebrations on the National Mall was estimated to be a total of roughly $128 million. And $100 million of that was expected to come from Congress, presumably as part of the official America 250 money, even though Trump hijacked all those events too. Another $14 million in federal grant money is estimated to have covered the cost of those dumb “Freedom Truck” museums.
Okay, so far, so good. Sort of. In this administration, a mere $14 million funding gap actually means things are going pretty well, budget-wise.
But here’s the problem. Ostensibly, Freedom 250 took in over $50 million in private donations. Thing is, none of that money appears in the documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
And those documents also show your taxpayer dollars going directly to Trump cronies. Big shock there, right? It looks like you gave $26 million to Event Strategies Inc., a company so beloved by Trumpworld that it helped stage Trump’s rally right before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, in case you were wondering.
The Interior Department also appears to have overspent on these events, though God knows how, given how Temu everything was. Nonetheless, in July, they begged for an additional $10 million to “recoup costs associated with support of events celebrating America’s Semiquincentennial.”
This sleight of hand—where we’re told we can’t possibly be mad about something because it’s privately funded—is the same thing that happened with Trump’s big dumb White House ballroom.
First, the ballroom was going to be entirely bribe-funded, but then we were on the hook for hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that Trump diverted from elsewhere in the federal budget. Back in June, we learned that about $300 million of the ballroom costs were coming from taxpayers, but honestly, that was months ago. Who knows what the cost is these days?
Oh, and it’s also the same thing that happened with the big dumb bribe plane.
A new Air Force One was supposed to be a “gift” from Qatar, which is presumably part of how the administration justified the very curious thing about Trump planning to take the jet with him when he leaves office, ostensibly to be part of his presidential library. As with the ballroom, however, we really have no idea how much we’re paying for the plane. Perhaps it’s $400 million to retrofit it, but perhaps it’s $1 billion. Who can say!
Compared with all that thievery, the $20 million in taxpayer dollars Trump used to run partisan political ads seems like small potatoes. And while the fallout from that stunt led Trump to say one of his PACs would pick up the tab going forward, that doesn’t mean he’s paying a dime back. Heavens, no.
As with innumerable things, Congress could stop this looting of the treasury, but the GOP majority thinks it is just fine and dandy if Trump steals your money for his vanity projects.
Posted with permission from Daily Kos
