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Donald Trump says he loooooves farmers, but when he put out his budget proposal, that love looks a little different. “We love our farmers,” he’s tweeted, but when it’s budget time, it turns out Trump wants to slash the Agriculture Department budget by 15 percent, even as farmers suffer from his trade wars. And farmers aren’t the only place Trump’s budget and his claimed values clash.
In his State of the Union address, Trump claimed that “My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the H.I.V. epidemic in the United States within 10 years.” In his actual budget, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, comes in for a 22 percent cut.
And at the same time the Trump administration is sending second lady Karen Pence overseas to support athletes at the Special Olympics, Trump’s budget yanks $17.6 million of financial support for the Special Olympics.
Go figure. Even though, in government, budgets are statements of values rather than real spending bills, Donald Trump couldn’t make his budgetary statement of values match up with what he says he values the rest of the time.