Education Secretary Betsy DeVos stirred controversy this week after she announced that she wanted to completely eliminate federal funding for the Special Olympics.
However, a new analysis by the Washington Post reveals that Trump himself could personally make up the funding required to fund the Special Olympics simply by taking five fewer trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort this year.
"Last month, we reported on new data from the Government Accountability Office which determined that Trump’s trips to his private club in Florida cost taxpayers about $3.4 million apiece, largely as a function of transporting the president and support material to the state," the Post explains. "Looking at it another way, the federal government had spent about as much on getting Trump to Mar-a-Lago by his second month in office as DeVos now wants to cut from supporting the Special Olympics."
According to the Post's data, Trump has made five separate trips to Mar-a-Lago since just this past November -- and there likely would have been more had the president not decided to stay in Washington D.C. during his self-imposed government shutdown.
Federal funding for the Special Olympics was set at $17,583,000 this fiscal year, which amounts to around 10 percent of the event's total budget.