Donald Trump continues to treat the federal government as his personal toy, with a letter signed by Trump going into food boxes distributed to struggling families. Less than three months before the election, that’s a not-so-subtle use of the presidency as a campaign tool.
The letter, which apparently isn’t being included in all of the food boxes—yet, anyway—takes credit for the Farmers to Families Food Box program, saying, “As President, safeguarding the health and well-being of our citizens is one of my highest priorities.” Not a high enough priority to respond to the coronavirus before it had a major foothold in the U.S., or to make testing widely available, or to work with Congress to renew expanded unemployment, or, well, a lot of other things. But high enough to take credit for the food boxes people have sitting on their tables as they read this letter.
Forty-nine House Democrats, led by Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio, objected to the Trump letter, writing to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, “Using a federal relief program to distribute a self-promoting letter from the President to American families just three months before the presidential election is inappropriate and a violation of federal law.”
As we know, though, Team Trump enjoys breaking the law and laughing at people who bother to care that laws are being broken. And since the letter doesn’t refer directly to the upcoming election, it’s a borderline case as far as the law goes—even though we all know what it’s about. Some food banks say they’ll remove the letters as too political. “As a non-profit, we would have to take the letter out of the boxes if they were included because we can’t publicly support political candidates,” one New York food bank director told ProPublica.
The letter also urges people to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19 … and then goes on to misrepresent one of the guidelines, calling on people to “consider wearing a face covering when in public” rather than to “Cover your mouth and nose with a mask when around others.”
The Farmers to Families Food Box program actually isn’t something that brings big bragging rights. Some contracts went to companies without the needed licensing for food distribution, and a Trump official admitted some regions of the country were “underserved.”
