“Wrote the budget by going through the president’s speeches, going through the interviews he had given and talking to him directly and finding out what his priorities were,” said Mick Mulvaney, the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget. “We took those words, those policies, and turned them into numbers.”
A difficult task, since most of what US President Donald Trump says is filled with empty rhetoric and often gibberish. Consider this statements:
Our nuclear is old and tired and [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] nuclear is tippy top from what I hear.
We’re going to make the country rich again and strong again, so you can afford military, and all of the other things.
— Donald Trump
Can’t make head or tale of these statements? Don’t worry, few can. And so Last Week Tonight host John Oliver explained how exactly Trump’s statements, which sound “like the audiobook of A Farewell to Arms broadcast by an iPhone submerged in hot coffee”, came to make the US federal budget.
Oliver had an easy explanation: “Basically, Mulvaney treats Trump’s past statements the way Trump treats women. Randomly singling out a few of them and reducing them down to numbers.”
And so Trump’s statement about Putin leads to cuts in the Department of Energy’s spending. “I don’t know how you turn that into policy,” Oliver said after the clip. “That apparently means a $1.4 billion increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration, while cutting the Department of Energy’s overall budget by $1.7 billion. But to be honest, I can’t be certain because I don’t speak fluent toddler psychopath.”
He also pointed out that people on both sides of the political spectrum had criticised the budget, and that it would affect Trump’s core voter base. Oliver concluded with a quote from Trump’s bestseller The Art of the Deal, or, The Art of the Wait, I Seem to be Betraying Everyone Who Supported Me, Ah Well, Forget It. Anyway, Let’s Talk About All The Trim I Got in the 80s, Right Fellas? Hunga-Munga!
The US President doesn’t seem to be paying attention to his own work and according to Oliver it might come crushing down on him. “Oh, I think people are catching on. It’s taking longer than is perhaps ideal but pretty soon all of us will be fed-up right up to the tippy-f***ing-tap.”
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