BY MATT BERG & CROOKED MEDIA |
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The people's Hampton Inn.”
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A Walmart-sized golden ballroom at the White House. Tax cuts for the rich. Rising prices. Exploding deficits. Welcome to MAGA Antoinette.
- President Donald Trump likes to call his gaudy Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, the “Winter White House.” Now he’s scheming to turn the actual White House into a kind of Summer Mar-a-Lago. Just check out the new patio umbrella tables on the freshly paved-over Rose Garden. What was he doing on the White House roof this week? Quite possibly surveying the site of his new $200 million, 90,000-foot imperial ballroom, fit for Scrooge McDuck or Tsar Nicholas II.
- This ballroom will be twice the size of a football field, excluding the endzones; nearly the size of a Walmart superstore; and almost double the size of the White House itself. Check out Crooked Media’s rendering here. Spoiler: It’s gonna look ridiculous.
- But the ballroom is also the perfect symbol of Trump 2.0’s rampant government waste. Trump swept into power promising radically efficient government, to be realized by Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting operation. Instead, he shuttered cost-effective programs, inflated the deficit, found ways to make the rich even richer, cut programs to help the poor… and now, he’s turning the White House into an imperial staycation spot.
Let’s just count the ways this administration has found to squander public funds, shall we?
- DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, proved… inefficient, to say the least. A top Trump official repeatedly bashed DOGE in a private meeting yesterday. The White House is rehiring hundreds of laid off workers from the National Weather Service. The administration is also paying 154,000 people to stay at home and not work, after accepting Trump’s deferred resignation program.
- Trump officials won’t say how much those salaries cost. But if you do some basic math using the average federal employee salary, the White House is spending over $5.4 billion just to keep these people away. Another estimate puts DOGE’s total waste at $21.7 billion.
- And that’s not the only way to calculate the Trump administration’s inefficiency! Last month, the State Department fired hundreds of foreign service officers. Many were globe-trotting diplomats who worked in embassies and on missions, and spent years studying languages, complex security protocols, and other skillsets. Foreign service officers typically need a security clearance, which can cost upwards of $30,000.
- The government had spent more than 6,000 weeks — or 115 years — teaching foreign languages to nearly 100 diplomats who were fired, according to data crowdsourced by diplomats and shared with What A Day. Will Trump’s solution be to sign a massive contract with Duolingo?
Will Trump’s solution be to sign a massive contract with Duolingo? I wouldn’t doubt it.
Call out: Are you a federal worker who took the deferred resignation? I wanna hear how you’ve been spending your time (and money)! Reach out to me at [email protected] or on Signal at mattberg.33.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed today that Israel wants to take full control of the Gaza Strip. The plan, which has been widely criticized by former Israeli military officials, could endanger the remaining living hostages in Gaza and lead to the deaths of more Palestinian civilians. If the plan is approved by Netanyahu’s security cabinet, it could take days or weeks for the military to begin pushing deeper into Gaza.
Top Trump officials huddled at the White House to discuss how to handle the Epstein files debacle last night. They’d initially planned to meet at Vice President JD Vance’s home, but moved the meeting and denied it ever took place following leaks about the secretive gathering, according to CNN. This is totally what you do when you’re NOT organizing a cover-up!
Related: Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has been barred from training service dogs at her new, cushy detention center, where she has been moved following a secretive meeting with a top Trump official. “We do not allow anyone whose crime involves abuse towards minors or animals — including any crime of a sexual nature,” said Paige Mazzoni, chief executive of Canine Companions. “That’s a hard policy we have, so she will not be able to.” At least someone isn’t breaking the rules in her favor these days.
The FBI supposedly agreed to help track down Texas Democrats who fled the state to prevent Texas Republicans from gerrymandering, according to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). But it’s still unclear whether the FBI is actually gonna do anything: Many of the lawmakers fled to Illinois. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker accused Cornyn of “a lot of grandstanding.”
A senior Department of Justice official urged January 6 rioters to “kill” cops, according to newly released bodycam footage. The official, Jared Wise, also verbally assaulted police, calling them “Nazi” and “Gestapo.” The DOJ’s response? “Jared Wise is a valued member of the Justice Department and we appreciate his contributions to our team.” Only the finest!
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin recommended a snazzy spot for his upcoming date night with Donald Trump: the United Arab Emirates. The White House, meanwhile, wants Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to join in. Will Putin be down for that? Well, he has allegedly tried to assassinate Zelenskyy several times, so… it would be awkward!
Trump said he ordered the Commerce Department to “immediately” begin working on a new census that wouldn’t include undocumented migrants. Can he even do that? Under the Constitution, the census has to include every resident in the U.S. The next census is scheduled for 2030. Between this and redistricting, it sure like he’s already trying to steal the 2026 midterms.
Trump called on Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign, after Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) accused him of having deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Tan was a venture capitalist who invested in Chinese tech companies before his work in the semiconductor industry.
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THERE'S MORE IN STORE
The Crooked Store’s big summer sale is here, and everything is 20% off! So if you want a new Friend Of The Pod tee or the redesigned Call Congress merch, it's all on sale for a limited time. Merch is a great way to show you support the pod without having to buy a meme coin or a golden phone with our faces etched on it, and right now it's all on sale. Shop 20% off everything at crooked.com/store.
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Americans are eating less ultra-processed foods than they have been in recent years, according to new government data. That’s great — but that group of foods (which includes things like hamburgers and soda) still accounts for more than half of adults’ caloric intake.
The creators of “The Office” are following that legendary series up with “The Paper,” a sitcom about a community newspaper that’s set in the same universe. The plot sounds awesome: The documentary team that filmed the Dunder Mifflin crew decides to film the longtime Toledo newspaper, The Truth Teller, and its publisher’s attempt to restore it to its former glory. It premieres on Peacock on September 4.
A Minnesota pizza shop owner noticed people eating pies out of the dumpster behind his restaurant, so he began leaving them pizzas and collecting money to donate to local charities. “There's what, 7 billion people in the world. If everybody can make a little tiny difference, it's monumentally better every day,” the owner said.
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