President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that his administration will not seek to slash funding for the Special Olympics after all, despite Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ best efforts to justify the absurdly cruel budget proposal over the past few days.
“I have overridden my people,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn, as he headed out to a rally in Michigan. He added that he had only heard about the idea “this morning.”
Let’s be extremely clear about what just happened: The proposed cut of just over $17 million dollars for the Special Olympics was part of the president’s own proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Trump let DeVos twist in the wind (or, rather, stand awkwardly at the elevator) to defend the proposal, before publicly tossing her under the bus, and admitting that he had no idea what was in his own budget proposal to begin with.
Great work all around.
Then, to add a truly idiotic cherry on his already garbage sundae, Trump shifted gears and offered the third-person boast that “Puerto Rico has been taken care of better by Donald Trump than by any living human being.”
In January it was reported that Trump had told then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and then-Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney he didn’t want to spend any money on Puerto Rico, following his own disastrous, willfully mismanaged response to Hurricane Maria, which killed nearly 1,500 people, and left the island in disarray.
Update, 5:18 p.m. ET: Sure, OK.