Tuesday, January 15, 2019

You Want Fries With That?

Having the team over for snacks?  Why not have it catered?  Oh, wait, it’s the White House and there’s a government shut-down.

The Clemson Tigers, fresh off their Jan. 7 victory over Alabama in the College Football Playoff national championship game, arrived Monday for a White House visit with President Trump. The team was served a variety of fast-food items, for which the White House said Trump paid out of his own pocket.

“I think we are going to serve McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King’s with some pizza. I really mean it,” Trump had said earlier in the day. “It will be interesting. I would think that’s their favorite food. So we’ll see what happens.”

According to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders (via The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey), Trump was “personally paying for the event to be catered with some of everyone’s favorite fast foods” because the partial government shutdown meant that some of the White House staff who might have handled the catering for this type of event are on furlough.

“The president wanted to host a fun event to celebrate the College Football National Champion Clemson Tigers,” deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement to CNN, adding that Trump’s gesture came about because “the Democrats refuse to negotiate on border security.”

Describing the fare as “great American food,” per a pool report, Trump said: “If it’s American, I like it. It’s all American stuff.”

Hey, everybody has to sacrifice in a pinch, but if memory serves — going back to when I was an undergrad at the University of Miami in the early 1970’s — the football team was on a really strict diet and junk food, no matter who served it or where, was off the menu.

And of course the White House had to throw in a dig at the Democrats and their refusal to pay for the mythical wall, so a nice if somewhat cholesterol-riddled gesture was tainted with Trumpian bullshit.  That’s off the diet, too.