Trump’s Grand Prix Race Was A Spectacle But Just How Tone-Deaf Was It?

Filed 1d ago · Via Forbes · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Flight of the Bumblebee

Rimsky-Korsakov — U.S. Air Force Band · Public Domain

Photo: Gordon Leggett · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Trump's 'Freedom 250' IndyCar race turned Pennsylvania Avenue into a 1.7-mile street circuit, shutting Reagan National Airport and closing D.C. roads for over a month; only 13 of 25 cars finished the 147-lap race amid a track The New York Times reported officials themselves warned invited disaster, with five of seven turns sharp right angles. A three-story banner of Trump's face went up on the Department of Labor building for the occasion.

The race drew 140,000 attendees and cost roughly $35 million, mostly from Penske and corporate sponsors, but sat inside a broader Freedom 250 program with up to $100 million in federal funding plus a separate $90 million special-events fund covering police, fire and security — with the taxpayer share never disclosed. Seven military flyovers accompanied the event, compared to the single flyover typical of races like the Indy 500.

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A government that won't disclose the taxpayer tab for its own victory lap has told you the number anyway — it's just written in the size of the banner. When half the field can't survive the course your own officials called a disaster, the metaphor stops being subtext and starts being policy. We'd ask for an accounting, but accountings don't come with flyovers.

Source: Read the original at Forbes → Scored: Flight of the Bumblebee · Rimsky-Korsakov — U.S. Air Force Band · CC BY 4.0

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