Month: July 2017

Trumps Spend $5 Million Less Than Obamas On White House Salaries

An analysis of White House salary data reveals that President Donald Trump’s administration is spending $5 million less of taxpayer money on his staff than his predecessor.

Trump employs 377 people at the White House, with a total of $35.8 million, while former President Barack Obama paid $40.9 million for 476 employees in 2015, according to data analyzed by Open The Books.

Another key difference between the Obama and Trump White House is the first lady’s staff. Michelle Obama retained 24 staffers in the first year of the Obama White House. Melania Trump currently employs four — a chief of staff who is also listed as advisor to the president, a deputy chief of staff, a communications director, and a scheduler.

“Projected four-year savings on the White House payroll could top $22 million,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open The Books, writes for Forbes. Those projected savings include Trump’s promise to accept one dollar in salary and give the remainder back to the U.S. Treasury.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, both advisors to the president, are not accepting any salary. Most top White House staff, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Omarosa Manigault, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, and 17 others make $179,000 annually.

Obama had the same number of top advisors at this stage of his presidency in 2009, but he also appointed many “czars” to oversee special initiatives with a particular focus on recovery efforts after the 2008 financial crisis. Trump has not continued that
While $22 million in savings is a tiny amount compared to the nearly $20 trillion national debt or the $3.9 trillion federal budget, “it could be a leading indicator of Trump’s commitment to cut waste, fraud and taxpayer abuse,” Andrzejewski said.

Hillary Clinton Spotted at Theater Performance in New York, Audience Bursts Into Applause

Poll: Public Trusts Trump More Than Media – Do You Agree 100% With This?

The news for the news media keeps getting worse.

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll out Monday shows that while the public has low trust in the Trump administration, they trust the media even less.

Just 30 percent of Americans said they have a “great deal” or “good amount” of trust in the news media, the poll shows. That’s lower than the 37 percent of Americans who said the same about the Trump administration. The poll found that 37 percent of adults said they trust the media “not at all,” while another 31 percent said they have “not very much” trust in the news media.

Democrats trust the media far more than either Republicans or independents, the poll shows. While 56 percent of Democrats said they have a “great deal” or “good amount” of trust in the news media, just 28 percent of independents and nine percent of Republicans said the same.

Trust in media appears to be headed in the wrong direction.
The percentage of Americans who have a great deal or good amount of trust in the media dropped four points over the last four months, down from 34 percent when NPR ran the same poll in March. The drop in trust in the media follows a rough stretch for journalists, as reporters have botched several stories on the Trump administration in recent months. (RELATED: CNN’s Month-Long Nightmare)

Americans also have low trust in opinion polls, according to the latest NPR poll.

Just 35 percent of Americans said they have a “great deal” or “good amount” of trust in public opinion polls. That number isn’t particularly surprising, as reporting on polls heading into the 2016 election almost universally indicated that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump.
The institution that Americans have the least trust in, though, isn’t the media — it’s Congress. Just 29 percent of adults said they have a “great deal” or “good amount” of trust in Congress, while two-thirds of respondents said they trust Congress “not at all” or “not very much.”