Trail Notes
Messing with Medicare / Sharp motorcade / $101m golf tab / Only happy history / Blue state freeze / Seashell game / Corporate pardons / Billionaire tax breaks
Messing with Medicare
We’ve all heard Donald Trump’s “affordability” shtick, that higher prices are a “hoax” invented by Democrats to make him look bad. Pay no attention to the data showing that many items cost more now than they did when he returned to the White House. All you need to know, he constantly reminds us, is that the stock market is good and Biden was bad.
But there are times when it seems the president really doesn’t get why as many as 65 percent of Americans aren’t happy with how he’s handling the economy. He can come across as surprisingly tone deaf.
On Tuesday, for instance, his administration announced that it’s going to end a subsidy program that lowered premiums for Medicare drug plans. That means that as many as 25 million Americans with Medicare Part D prescription plans will likely see the cost of their medications rise next year. Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, described the government subsidies as a “bailout” that is no longer necessary. Conveniently for Republicans, the bump in med costs won’t happen until after the midterms.
Oh, in case you forgot, here’s a flashback to Trump’s 2024 campaign: “We’re going to protect our great seniors,” he said, “and I will never let anyone touch your Medicare.”
Sharp motorcade
Then there was Trump’s speech in Michigan Monday when he boasted that the federal government just ordered 250 Cadillac Escalades, which retail for more than $90,000 each, for Secret Service motorcades. “Our guys are very spoiled,” he told the crowd. “They like the Escalade. So do I. We look sharp in those Escalades.”
$101 million golf tab
The president’s golf tab keeps rising. According to the latest update, his weekend golf outings during his second term have cost U.S. taxpayers at least $101 million so far. Each trip to Mar-a-Lago, meanwhile, costs about $3.4 million.
Only happy history
Last Friday, Washington, D.C., took another step into Bizarro World. As directed by a Trump executive order, the National Park Service will soon begin posting signs outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History warning tourists that it does not accurately reflect U.S. history. The White House had previously accused the museum of promoting “extreme political activism, rooted in Marxism, to divide, dispirit, and discourage Americans.” Now the temporary signage will tell visitors that the museum’s exhibits “should be renovated” and direct them “to locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history.”
Blue state freeze
One thing that Donald Trump doesn’t get enough credit for is bringing the word “retribution” back into common usage. Hardly a day goes by when the news media aren’t sharing details of another Trump get-even scheme. The latest: Administration attorneys admitted in court that more than 300 renewable energy grants valued at more than $8 billion were cancelled “solely” because they were in states Trump lost in 2024 or were represented by two Democratic senators.
Just a few months ago, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told a congressional committee that “all of the people that worked on our project review process did not take into account any politics in the evaluation of these projects.”
Seashell game
Attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey asked a federal judge Monday to throw out the case against him, arguing it’s only “common sense” that posting a photo of seashells on Instagram doesn’t qualify as a death threat. The Justice Department contends that since the shells were arranged to spell out “86 47,” Comey’s posting was advocating for violence against the president. But his attorneys pointed out that the “Supreme Court has rejected threats prosecutions based on speech far more directly threatening than Mr. Comey’s seashell post,” and argued that the case should never go to trial, which is currently scheduled for October. If you can snag a seat at the trial, don’t forget to wear a “86 47” T-shirt, which you can buy in a variety of colors on Amazon, Etsy, TeePublic and other websites.
Corporate pardons
Donald Trump loves pardons. Over the past 18 months, he’s granted clemency to nearly 1,700 lawbreakers, most of them participants in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot or fraudsters with political or personal connections to the White House.
What hasn’t received much attention, however, is that Trump is the first U.S. president in modern times to issue pardons to entire companies, according to Bloomberg. So far, he’s pardoned nine companies, ranging from an auto supplier to a crypto platform to a media startup, and in the process wiped out $200 million in penalties. At least some of the money would have gone to victims of the crimes the companies committed.
Billionaire tax breaks
It’s no secret that uber rich Americans don’t pay anything close to what could be considered their fair share of taxes. But the scale of how much they avoid paying is staggering, according to a recent ProPublica analysis of Internal Revenue Service data. Between 2014 and 2018, the 25 richest people in the country saw their collective net worth rise by more than $400 billion, but they ended up paying a tax rate of only 3.4 percent. The tax rate can be four times higher for middle-class families. More billionaires live in California than any other state, and this November Golden State voters will have the opportunity to approve a proposition on the ballot that would levy a one-time, 5-percent wealth tax on their assets. (For more on that, see Dean Baker’s July 27 “On the Money” column.)
Kash’s Russia trip
Politico reports that FBI Director Kash Patel is planning a trip to Russia just weeks before the midterm elections. According to sources, he will be meeting with officials of the FSB, the successor to the old Soviet KGB. The purpose of the meeting is unknown, but it is highly unusual. The last time an FBI director visited Russia was in 2013. For what it’s worth, during Trump’s first term, Patel played a role in undercutting the investigation of Russia’s collusion with Trump’s campaign.
Media merger delay
The controversial merger that would make Paramount Skydance a dominant movie studio and give it control of HBO and CNN has been postponed for as long as a year. Paramount agreed to the pause while an antitrust lawsuit filed by attorneys general in 15 states moves through the courts. Paramount will now have to pay a $650 million fee to Warner Bros Discovery shareholders for every quarter the deal is delayed. It also means that Paramount CEO David Ellison, who has already ruined CBS on behalf of his pal Donald Trump, would not be able to take over CNN before the midterms.
Canadian snub
All that Trump yammering about making Canada the 51st state has taken one big toll on tourism. Last year, Canadian trips to the United States plummeted 25 percent from the previous year representing a loss of $1.7 billion. Instead of visiting the United States, they took more trips overseas and within their own country.
Measles madness
Maybe someday Donald Trump will realize that setting records for new measles cases doesn’t actually mean we’re winning. But here we are. It’s only July and we’ve already surpassed last year’s total, which was the highest since 1990. Twenty-six years after measles was considered eliminated in the United States there have been 2,295 cases this year so far.
Whitewashing Ike
The administration’s proposal to paint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building a bright white to match the neighboring White House has come under fire by two dozen historic preservation experts. They argued in a court filing that doing so is unnecessary and could damage the stone, adding that it could become a “taxpayers’ nightmare” by requiring periodic repainting.
On the wrong track
As part of a pitch to Congress to fund a $8 billion rehab of New York’s Penn Station, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recommended that the iconic train station get a new name. He stopped short of suggesting what that would be, but in the past when asked if the busiest station in the Western hemisphere should be renamed “Trump Station,” Duffy responded, “I think that has a nice ring to it.” Earlier this month, West Palm Beach’s airport was renamed President Donald J. Trump International Airport.
Editors Note: Money Trail staffers will be on vacation for the first two weeks of August. Our “Trail Notes” weekly wrap-up will be back on Friday, August 21.
Randy Rieland, Money Trail’s “Trail Notes” columnist, is a former columnist at Smithsonian magazine, website director at the Discovery Channel, and senior writer at Washingtonian magazine.
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