President Donald Trump's senior officials have marshaled taxpayer resources to the tune of $1 billion, just on various projects to keep Trump personally happy, Rolling Stone reported on Friday.
This comes after the president has already received widespread criticism for the self-aggrandizing aspects of his Cabinet meetings, including having them all sit in a room full of "Gulf of America" merchandise, referencing his executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
"Trump’s demands for flattery are costing a fortune," reported Ryan Bort, Asawin Suebsaeng, and Andrew Perez. His new administration is only a few months in, and already the total price of just three such initiatives — a flashy, Trump-flattering ad campaign from the Department of Homeland Security, a gigantic military parade in Washington, D.C., on Trump’s birthday, and the repurposing of a palatial airplane from Qatar as Trump’s new Air Force One that he can use in his post-presidency — will easily top $1 billion. And that’s just the beginning."
Political author Anthony DiMaggio said that these efforts “have to do with a president who needs to be not only at the center of a media circus, but who needs to be told ritualistically over and over how great he is. What’s interesting to me about this, as a political scientist, is that it’s not just a personality-based thing or a defect. It’s a broader pattern that has to do with behaviors that are overlapping with authoritarian politics and ideology.”
According to the report, these policies to keep the president flattered pervade into everything. For instance, after Attorney General Pam Bondi made a widely-mocked boast that fentanyl seizures under the Trump administration saved 119 million lives, staffers went scouring the internet for examples of Democrats "flipping the f--- out" over Bondi's remarks, that they could compile into a printout and hand to Trump to improve his mood.
The same day this report was made public, Trump announced on social media another vanity project, to add a $100 million ballroom onto the White House.