Here’s How Much the Government Spends Flattering Trump

Grandiose efforts to boost Donald Trump’s ego are costing America a fortune.

Trump’s second term is still shy of the six-month mark, but already, millions have been spent to flatter him.

Just three stunts to fluff the president have already totaled upward of a billion dollars, reported Rolling Stone Friday. They include a Bastille Day–inspired military parade to celebrate Trump’s birthday, the repurposing of an ultraluxury jumbo jet from Qatar for Air Force One (which Trump is setting up so no one else can use it after he leaves the White House), and a TV ad campaign featuring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem zealously thanking the president (in the background, the Trump campaign’s top vendor is quietly cashing in on the DHS-funded ad spot).

And on Friday, Trump announced that the White House would be undergoing a massive renovation by way of adding a ballroom to the symbol of American democracy. (Trump has previously promised to pay for the $100 million expansion himself, but only time will tell if the convicted fraudster will actually follow through or take the funds from public coffers.)

But the glitz and glam is about more than simply placating the president, according to political scientists. Instead, the whole spectacle is attached to Trump’s authoritarian leanings.

“They 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,” Anthony DiMaggio, author of Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here, told Rolling Stone. “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.”

But the itch doesn’t stop at gift receiving. Trump’s second-term quest to nix Washington’s so-called “deep state” and replace it with an army of MAGA yes-men has so far been successful. At Cabinet meetings and press briefings, officials from across the political landscape are quick to puff up the president. The problem became particularly evident in April, when Trump wheeled out his “Liberation Day” tariff plan using figures that nobody in his vicinity had dared to notify him were founded on bad math.

The result is a Trumpian loyalty more akin to a religion than a political ideology: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has pleaded with Congress to trust the president’s economic will. Cabinet meetings begin with a round-robin of gushing for Trump’s performance. The White House has spent money producing propaganda that does little more than thank Trump for his agenda.

Even congressional Republicans, who are supposed to be detached from Trump’s influence, have repeatedly kowtowed to the president’s will.

The sycophantic displays between Trump and his advisers give off “Dear Leader” vibes, similar to “what you would see with Kim Jong Un or [Vladimir] Putin,” Democracy Defenders Fund’s Virginia Canter told Rolling Stone, noting that the president treats his Cabinet members as his “personal staff.”

“They’re there to stroke his ego,” Canter said.

GOP Representative Mary Miller—who once said that Adolf Hitler was “right about one thing”—wrongly identified a Sikh man as Muslim in a racist X post regarding who was allowed to lead prayer in the House.

“It’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning. This should have never been allowed to happen,” she wrote on X over a picture of Giani Singh, a Sikh Granthi from southern New Jersey who was welcomed to give the prayer by Republican Representative Jeff Van Drew. “America was founded as a Christian nation, and I believe our government should reflect that truth, not drift further from it. May God have mercy,” she concluded.

The Illinois representative then edited her post, changing “Muslim” to “Sikh” before just deleting the post entirely.

Miller is a right-wing religious zealot who can’t even get her bigotry right. And the U.S. was not founded as a “Christian nation” but as a country with the right to freedom of religion, which would make a Sikh man leading prayer very appropriate. Miller was quickly condemned for her comments.

“It’s deeply troubling that someone with such contempt for religious freedom is allowed to serve in this body. This should have never been allowed to happen,” Democratic Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman replied. “America was founded as [a] free nation, and I believe the conduct of its legislators should reflect that truth, not drift further from it.”

“I often say that I serve in Congress with some of the greatest minds of the 18th century. With Rep. Miller I may need to take it back a few more centuries,” Democratic Representative Jared Huffman stated.

The intelligence community’s watchdog office has a mole in it.

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard squeezed one of her own advisers into the subagency tasked with monitoring her, potentially compromising the office’s integrity, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with The Washington Post.

That plant is Dennis Kirk, who was installed in the office on May 9. Kirk still reports to the director of national intelligence, one of the officials told the Post.

Kirk is a known player in Trumpworld. He was present during Donald Trump’s first term, serving as an adviser in the Office of Personnel Management. He also co-authored a portion of Project 2025 that focused on the federal workforce.

The watchdog office is currently investigating the Trump administration’s Signalgate scandal, in which several Cabinet members not only relied on Signal to discuss sensitive, real-time war details about bombing Yemen but also mistakenly invited The Atlantic’s editor in chief to bear witness to the shocking national security blunder. Gabbard was included in the text chain.

On Thursday, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Representative Stephen F. Lynch, issued a letter to the inspector general of the intelligence community demanding to know how Kirk had climbed his way into the watchdog entity, and how his installment might influence the office’s Signal investigation.

Writing to acting Inspector General Tamara A. Johnson, Lynch underscored that the matter was of “grave concern” and that Gabbard had “dubious legal authority” to appoint Kirk to the office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, or ICIG, in the first place.

“The appointment of a highly partisan advocate for prioritizing personal loyalty to President Trump above independence and professionalism in the federal government—and one who apparently answers to DNI Gabbard rather than to you—in a senior role within IC IG raises troubling questions about the independence of the IC IG and whether there exists a need for Congress to strengthen protections for the IC IG’s independence,” Lynch wrote.

Lynch further ordered the office to provide a detailed job description for Kirk’s role, the statute that allowed Gabbard to install Kirk into the watchdog office, a list of officials that Kirk reports to, an explanation of where Kirk’s position falls in ICIG’s organizational structure, and whether Kirk is involved in or has any influence over the Signal investigation.

Donald Trump’s administration is forcing horrible conditions upon a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and a group of immigrant detainees in limbo from a paused deportation to South Sudan.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocked the government’s imminent removal of a group of immigrants to South Sudan, ruling that immigration authorities had failed to give the detainees the opportunity to challenge their removal there. While Murphy had ruled that the government needed to maintain custody over the detainees, he never said that they could not be returned back to the United States—but the Trump administration has insisted on keeping them at Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. naval base in Djibouti, despite the dire conditions there.

In a court filing Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security’s acting Deputy Executive Associate Director Mellissa Harper testified about the poor condition to which the detainees, and the ICE officers charged with guarding them, had been subjected.

Harper said that the group of detainees were being held in a conference room in a converted Conex shipping container, which is “not equipped or suitable for detention of any length.”

Detainees are subjected to pat-downs before using the restrooms, located 40 yards from the container. Outside the container, the daily temperature has regularly reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit, so showers can only happen at night.

Harper said that since first arriving at Camp Lemonnier, things have been rough, with a nearby burn pit used to dispose of trash and waste creating a disgusting smoke that lingers in the air. “Within 72 hours of landing in Djibouti, the officers and detainees began to feel ill,” Harper said. “The medical staff did not have immediate access to medication necessary to treat their symptoms.”

She lamented the conditions of the ICE officials, who had foregone anti-malaria treatment before arriving in Djibouti and continue to experience a range of symptoms including coughing, difficulty breathing, fever, and achy joints.

The original team of three ICE officers who escorted the detainees was expanded late last month to a staff of 13, including two ICE officers to help medical staff. The group of ICE officers must share six beds total.

Harper also noted that the ICE officers did not have “body armor or other gear” that would be useful during a rocket attack from Yemen. It’s equally likely that the detainees also lack body gear, but that went unmentioned.

While the detainees may be kept on the base for an indeterminate amount of time, Harper said that relief will soon come to the ICE officers watching them.

“Notwithstanding staffing challenges, the current group of ICE officers responsible for administering these duties is expected to be replaced soon,” Harper said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has repeatedly railed against the federal judge’s decision to block the deportation, arguing that it puts ICE officers at risk. But in fact, it is their government that has stranded them abroad and endangered their lives.

MAGA is struggling to cope with the sudden rift between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire former bureaucrat they’d come to embrace as one of their own. 

Trump’s sycophants were left high and dry Friday after Musk broke with the president, attacking his big beautiful bill for being too, well, big, while Trump claimed that Musk is only mad because the spending bill would remove the electric vehicle mandate that subsidizes Tesla. Things remain tense, after Trump threatened Thursday to revoke Musk’s government contracts, leading the technocrat to raise the president’s ties to convicted sex offender and alleged human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was struggling to corral the fighting. 

“I don’t know what has motivated this disturbance to begin, but obviously it’s not helpful,” said Johnson, whom Musk had previously targeted when the Tesla CEO opposed the last government spending bill in December. 

“My way is that policy disputes are not personal,” Johnson continued. “I’ve tried very hard to speak with Elon over and over, you know? And talk with him about what I believe are misconceptions he has about this bill and what it is.”

On Fox News, anchors tried to walk the line between Trump and Musk.

Sean Hannity called the rift over the missing E.V. mandate “understandable,” but he also leapt to respond to the Epstein allegations, despite the fact that Trump’s name was indeed in the Epstein files that his own administration released in February. 

“And on the Epstein issue, wasn’t it Donald Trump, he booted Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago nearly 20 years ago?” Hannity argued. Trump had reportedly banned Epstein a few months before the New York financier pleaded guilty to sex offense charges in 2008.

Hannity continued, turning his attention to someone else entirely: former President Bill Clinton. “Is he in those files also? I can’t say for sure, I haven’t seen them. But if I was a betting man, I know where I’d put my money!”

Jesse Watters summed the rift up as an “issue of donor maintenance.”

“But maybe they could patch things up,” Watters said. “Vance called Trump ‘Hitler,’ and he’s on the ticket!”

And online, where MAGA really lives, people were spiraling. 

Catturd, a pitiable MAGA shill account, seemed lost after Musk unfollowed him, and got into a fight with Alex Jones for failing to defend Trump. “Many large influencer accounts desperately tried to stay neutral today,” Catturd wrote, adding that his position on Trump had never changed. 

“But when you come out and call Trump a pedophile—that’s when you’ve crossed a redline. Don’t care about anything you have to say after that,” he added. 

Jones did ultimately defend Trump Friday, writing in a post on X, “I have investigated Trump for 10 years looking for any connection to Epstein’s crimes and found zero evidence.”

Right-wing filmmaker hack Dinesh D’Souza brought his own brand of copium to the debate, and mused in an outlandish post on X that there may be a greater conspiracy behind the apparent rift. 

“Is this some sort of perverse scheme to force the release of the Epstein files? How great it would be to have a horde of bad guys publicly exposed. Then Trump and Elon break out the champagne,” D’Souza wrote.

Others counseled reconciliation. “Broooos please noooooo 🫂   We love you both so much,” wrote Kanye West, outspoken antisemite and musical artist. 

The House of Representatives is trying to pass a resolution making the term “Free Palestine” an official antisemitic slogan. 

Republican Representative Gabe Evans from Colorado introduced the resolution in the wake of the attack on a gathering for Israeli hostages in Boulder this week. Mohammed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national, has been charged for the attack, during which he yelled “Free Palestine,” according to the FBI.

“Whereas, while shouting ‘Free Palestine,’ an antisemitic slogan that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and Jewish people, Mohammed Sabry Soliman attacked the peaceful demonstrators with homemade Molotov cocktails,” the resolution reads. House Republicans are expected to vote on the nonbinding resolution next week.

The term “free Palestine” has been a touchy subject among liberal and conservative Zionists alike, as they have long deemed even saying it to be antisemitic hate speech against Jews rather than an acknowledgment of the decades of displacement, destruction, death, and apartheid that Palestinians have suffered at the hands of the Israeli government. This right-wing attack on free speech clearly demonstrates the hypocrisy of these “anti-woke” Republicans who love to wax poetic about the land of the free while kidnapping students off the streets for writing op-eds. Now this resolution seeks to further entrench the flawed logic that the Jewish religion and culture and the Israeli government that has been starving and bombing Palestinians are one and the same. Anyone who votes against this bill in an attempt to protect free speech will be labeled a terrorist sympathizer.   

The labor market is slowing, but it’s all good news in the White House.

The U.S. added 139,000 jobs in May, a slight decline from April, according to a jobs report released Friday. The unemployment rate remained at 4.2 percent, still within the ballpark of historic lows reached in 2023, when the unemployment rate reached 3.4 percent—the lowest it had been in more than five decades. But within the folds of the report hid a major red flag for Donald Trump’s agenda: The U.S. is still bleeding manufacturing jobs.

“GREAT JOB NUMBERS, STOCK MARKET UP BIG! AT THE SAME TIME, BILLIONS POURING IN FROM TARIFFS!!!” Trump celebrated on Truth Social.

But even the president’s favorite conservative network couldn’t hide its dismay at the slight manufacturing downturn.

“Now, 8,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in May. That’s not what you wanted to see,” said Fox Business host Stuart Varney.

“Well, we’re certainly holding steady,” said Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. “And under the Trump administration, manufacturing jobs are still up over what the last administration, under [Joe] Biden, had.

“The focus of my ‘America at Work’ tour is to increase those manufacturing jobs, and we’ll continue to stay laser focused on that as the president continues to double down on how important this is to the American economy,” she added.

“But how come we’re losing 8,000 manufacturing jobs in May, when there’s a big push to bring manufacturing jobs back to America? How come we’re losing those jobs?” Varney pressed.

Chavez-DeRemer was stuck in her script. “We’re certainly holding steady,” she insisted.

Since the beginning of April, Trump has pitched his global tariff agenda as a means to return manufacturing jobs to U.S. shores. But two months later, the president’s on-again, off-again tariffs have done little more than add tumult to American markets and trade. Investors have learned to play the market by an unflattering acronym—TACO, or “Trump always chickens out”—while administration officials such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have blundered by publicly admitting they have no intention of bringing tariffs between the U.S. and other nations down to zero.

The breakup is really official now: President Trump is getting rid of his Tesla.

Trump’s red Tesla with Florida tags will be given away or sold, according to Fox News. This comes after Elon Musk and the president’s massive argument spilled over on Thursday, as Musk lambasted Trump’s big, beautiful bill for adding trillions to the deficit, while Trump posited that Musk knew about the bill all along and was just upset that he was losing his E.V. subsidies. Now Trump is ditching his Tesla too.

While this beef isn’t particularly shocking, it’s a long way from where the two men’s relationship was just a few months ago. In March, Musk pulled up to the White House with multiple Tesla trucks and cars and did free promo with the president.

“I’m going to buy [a Tesla] because, number one, it’s a great product,” Trump told reporters then. “It’s as good as it gets. And number two, because this man has devoted his energy and his life to doing this. I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people.”

Musk has tweeted through the pain over the last 24 hours, calling his critics “retards” and threatening to pull his Space X program from the U.S. But Trump couldn’t seem to care less as he pushes his bill forward regardless of what his former confidant says. This is what happens when the richest man on earth gets into it with perhaps the pettiest president ever.

For months, Donald Trump and Elon Musk were practically inseparable. Now, a week after the Tesla CEO formally left the White House, the president has a new title for his ex-financier: “the man who has lost his mind.”

Speaking with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl early Friday morning, Trump added fuel to the MAGA duo’s viscerally public breakup. He did not, however, sound “angry or even concerned” about the feud, reported Karl.

“As for reports that there is going to be a Trump/Musk call scheduled for today, Trump told me he is ‘not particularly’ interested in talking to Musk although he says Musk wants to talk to him,” Karl wrote on X.

People close to the president have described Trump as “bummed” about his severed relationship with Musk.

The fiery back-and-forth between Trump and his former adviser is the culmination of differing opinions on the president’s “big, beautiful bill.” Musk has spent days trying to size down Trump’s domestic budget agenda, which aims to extend his 2017 tax cut plan for multimillionaires and corporations.

The tech billionaire has referred to the spending package as “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination,” criticizing the continuing resolution for potentially adding trillions of dollars to the national deficit. Musk has also leveraged his gargantuan fortune to influence Congress against voting for the bill, pledging to finance primary opponents to any lawmaker who votes in favor of the tax cut.

On Thursday, the stern disagreement boiled into a digital spectacle, with the two powerhouses throwing insults at each other over social media in real time until Musk claimed that Trump was mentioned in the infamous Epstein files. Musk wrote on X that Trump’s alleged involvement was “the real reason” the pedophile exposé had not yet been made public.

In response, Trump posted on Truth Social, “I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago. This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It’s a Record Cut in Expenses, $1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given.”

Hours later, Musk was retweeting Trump’s posts from 2012 and 2013, claiming that the deficit- and budget-minded former reality TV star had been replaced by a “body double.”

But Musk has had real influence in breaking up the MAGA block. Several Republican senators have said they oppose Trump’s bill as-is, with the majority of naysayers citing the budget’s enormous price tag as their reason why.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went on yet another angry tirade against federal judges who rule against Donald Trump.

During an appearance on Fox News Thursday night, Leavitt was asked to respond to a federal judge who blocked the removal of the wife and five children of a man charged in a firebombing attack against peaceful protesters in Boulder, Colorado. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had the family arrested despite having no evidence that they were involved in the attack.

Leavitt, who regularly rails against anyone who opposes Trump, was predictably incensed.

“Well, this is just another rogue decision by a rogue judge who is trying to be—I don’t know—the president of the United States? The secretary of state? The secretary of homeland security?” Leavitt said. “Surely, these important matters of both homeland security and national security do not belong to lower district, local judges in these districts across the country.”

Leavitt’s insistence that federal judges, whom she attempted to dismiss as “local,” don’t have the jurisdiction to rule against Trump betrays a failure to grasp the whole “checks and balances” part of the U.S. Constitution.

Leavitt continued, once again complaining about another federal judge who had blocked the unlawful deportation of immigrants to South Sudan, and supposedly stranded some ICE agents in a “dangerous part of the world.” (The judge did not specifically say that the agents needed to stay overseas, which means the government is choosing not to bring them back.)

“Lower district court judges do not get to dictate the foreign policy and the national security interests of the United States of America. We can’t run a country if the executive is not allowed to freely exercise its powers, and that’s what we’re seeing take place,” Leavitt said.

Unfortunately for the Trump administration, the hits to its illegal immigration agenda just keep on coming. A federal judge on Thursday blocked the arrest and removal of Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student and green card holder who was targeted by the administration over her involvement in pro-Palestinian protests. In a brutal hearing, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald called the government’s position “disturbing” and “disappointing.”

“This is a new world. I’m a little taken aback,” Reice Buchwald said.