Previously, on White House Apprentice, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Instead of doing whatever it is that the secretary of health and human services is actually supposed to do in a Trump administration, Tom Price was out here making it rain on hos flossing and living the good life while taking $400,000 worth of private-jet flights on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime.
Donald Trump was reportedly very mad at Price, and he said early Friday that he would make a decision as to whether or not Price would stay in his position at HHS. The Washington Post reports that Trump called Price a “fine man” but said that he did not like the “optics” of Price getting caught balling on the taxpayers’ dollar.
“I’m not happy, I can tell you that. I’m not happy,” Trump said, unironically, as he prepared to leave the White House en route to his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., also on the taxpayers’ dime.
Apparently the cost of waiting for the president’s decision was too much for Price, because he turned in his resignation Friday afternoon.
As previously reported on The Root, Price chartered at least 26 private flights since May in order to conduct official business inside the country. He later claimed that he would pay back all the money, but so far has ponied up only $51,887.31. As The Root’s own Stephen A. Crockett Jr. pointed out, that amount is based on what it would have cost Price to fly alone in business class for all of those flights.
Chartering private jets: $400,000
Amount paid back to the American taxpayers: $51,887.31
Quitting your job before Trump can yell “You’re fired!”: Priceless
There are many things the American dollar can buy. For everything else, there’s a cushy job in the Trump administration.
Quick question: Do we get a refund for his bullshit?
Meanwhile, the White House issued a statement saying that Trump will designate Don J. Wright—who currently serves as the deputy assistant secretary for health and director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion—as acting secretary of HHS.
In his resignation letter, Price wrote that it was “an honor and a privilege” to work with the president “to reform a broken health care system, empower patients, reduce regulatory burdens, ensure global health security, and tackle clinical priorities such as the opioids epidemic, serious mental illness and childhood obesity.”
Sir, you didn’t accomplish a gotdamn thing. What are you even talking about? And you had the nerve to print this out on that good printer paper the American people are paying for? You are costing us money even as you quit your job, you expensive-ass loser.
Once again, the Trump administration is miserably failing the American people, and it is the American people who are paying the ultimate price.
Read more at the Washington Post.