The Wall Street Journal reports:
The White House is planning to instruct federal agencies to not renew their subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post, administration officials said, escalating President Trump’s attacks on the media outlets.
“Not renewing subscriptions across all federal agencies will be a significant cost saving—hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars will be saved,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email Thursday.
Hm. Well, they could also save a lot of money by getting rid of the CIA and all other intelligence-gathering government agencies. They could save a lot of money by closing the whole government down and going home, but there are some drawbacks to that way of doing things.
Comments
11 responses to “Huge boon to taxpayers”
There are lots of ways to save money. Why do they choose that particular one? And why those particular two newspapers? Hmmm…I wonder…
The WaPo offers free subscriptions to anyone with a .mil, .edu, or .gov email address, so I’ll be interested to see how much money this childish move actually “saves” — my assumption is that the number of subscriptions being purchased currently is negligible at best (perhaps a few paper copies for waiting rooms and such).
Valuable information. I guess I could get a WaPo subscription if I want one, then, since I have a .edu email. Thanks for that.
And it’s typical Trump, isn’t it? Cancel your free subscriptions, everyone! Got to save Trump from embarrassment…errr…I mean, got to save…{what was that again? What was I supposed to say? Oh, yeah, thanks}…got to save MONEY! YUUUUGE Money!
Meanwhile, a story in the NYT reports on a loophole that has cost the government $18 billion in oil royalties. But clearly saving a relative pittance on subscription costs should be the top priority. Nice to see that Grisham is picking up where Huckabee Sanders left off…
Not only that, but the money saved could be used to buy Donald Trump a copy of My Very First Colour-in Atlas which he could colour in all by himself and learn a bit of North American geography in the process: like that Colorado does not have a border with Mexico.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/24/trump-colorado-wall-awkward-not-a-border-state
I was so excited about the free .edu subscription at the WaPo after all these years of paying the full rate that I couldn’t even spell subscription right (took me three tries). Turns out that it’s not free, but there is a discount (.mil and .gov people get it free).
Also, it’s digital only. Sigh.
It appears to be only for students, faculty, and staff, not all people with an edu email address (which includes many alumni).
My guess is Trump is trying to run both papers out of business, assuming or hoping that a big drop in subscriptions will show them (and everyone else) what happens when he’s crossed.
Not even one trip to the golf course.
Re WaPo, did anyone try this link? It does say “start” a free subscription, so perhaps it’s only for an initial period. I’m not eligible, so I can’t click through all the options.