Magnificent Benefactor Donald Trump Donates 1/6th Of A Golf Trip To Fight Coronavirus. Hail Magnificent Benefactor Trump!

Now let's talk about the billions in proposed cuts to public health!

The White House made another of its exciting announcements of Donald Trump's incredible generosity to America, tweeting yesterday that the Great Man had "donated" his salary for the current economic quarter to the Department of Health and Human Services, to help with the fight against the coronavirus. What a wonderful man God picked to be our Dear Leader!

President @realDonaldTrump made a commitment to donate his salary while in office. Honoring that promise and to fur… https: //t.co/M3GHa9RYI9

— Stephanie Grisham (@Stephanie Grisham) 1583260727.0 

That check for $100,000 will certainly go a long way! Even when you consider it'll have to be split into $33,333.33 segments for confronting, containing, and combating the virus.

And, as we've noted before, it also means Trump can take a nice tax deduction each time he "donates" his salary to a federal agency, so it's like we're paying him twice. It's a small way we can thank him for all he's donetofor us, isn't it?

At the risk of being big spoilsports about the "president's" "generosity," we should probably also note that the $100K donation is a teensy drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars in cutsTrump proposed for the federal public health infrastructure. Those proposed cuts included $1.9 billion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,of which $25 million would be taken from "public health preparedness and response." And another $3 billion from the National Institutes of Health, HHS's research arm. On top of all that, Trump wanted to slash the US's contribution to the World Health Organization by half, for another $3 billion in cuts.

So gosh, his $100,000 "donation" really would amount to trying to plug a huge budgetary hole with a very, very tiny finger.

Ah, but we can hear you thinking that those cuts were never approved by Congress, so isn't Trump actually providing a great big boost to the actual funds for fighting coronavirus? Sure thing! It's better than nothing — but also darn close to nothing, considering that Congress is working on a bill to allocate $7.5 billion for coronavirus response. But sure, Trump's generosity should cover some N-95 respirator masks and a few bags of saline solution. $100K might not be quite enough to cover the full costs of one patient hit with an out-of-network hospital bill, but every little bit helps.

For a bit of perspective, though, let's also note that Donald Trump's average golf outing costs about $600,000, though that varies depending on whether he's taking the money-gulping Air Force One from DC to his Bedminster resort in New Jersey, or all the way to his Florida trash palace. As the Washington Post revealed in February, Trump's businesses have billed the Secret Service for almost half a million dollars since 2017, and those are just the costs that could actually be tracked down — an unknown amount is still hidden. And that's leaving aside the $13.8 million in local security costs racked up by Palm Beach County for his visits to Mar-a-Lago, $10 million of which has been paid so far by taxpayers.

And let's not even mention the benefits Trump reaped from his own Big Fat Tax Cut for Rich Fuckwads, which amounted to a nice bonus of between $11 million and $22 million a year for Trump; the exact amount isn't clear because we'll never ever see his taxes while his tiny Big-Mac-greased hands are on the levers of government.

Still, all hail the Great Man, whose generosity is limited only by his puny presidential salary of $400,000 a year. It's certainly not his fault that we don't pay him more.

[ Vox / Golf News Network / WaPo / Americans for Tax Fairness ]

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