Government shutdowns mean that a large swath of federal employees can’t work or get a paycheck, but the Trump administration is still using the time for MAGA-related purposes.
That’s the impression the White House was eager to convey, at least, when it released photos yesterday of president Donald Trump “working in the White House during the Democrat shutdown.” The images show Trump sitting at an empty desk with a phone to his ear, walking stiffly around the building, and standing stone-faced at a jovial-looking staff meeting. In all the photos he wears his trademark “Make America Great Again” campaign hat, in white.
Predictably, people on Twitter have begun mocking and captioning the photos:
MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi also threw a barb during his show yesterday, saying that he wished his own desk was as clean as the president’s. The Trump administration caught flak in January just after the election, when press photos showed the president’s desk covered in haphazard stacks of papers. The organizational strategy was covered then by everyone from Vogue to Town & Country magazine.
Now, much like the prospects of a timely resolution to the government shutdown, the desk is bare.