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Donald Trump swept into Daytona, Florida for the Daytona 500 on Sunday while the arrival of a rainstorm — combined with the president’s own pre-race stunt — threatened to delay the race for hours.
Sunday afternoon storms forced race officials to stop NASCAR’s biggest event on the 11th lap. Initial reports indicated that the race could be held up until around 7 p.m. EST.
But the rain couldn’t stop the president from hogging the spotlight, which a crowd of cheering Trump fans in the audience didn’t appear to mind. The president took a lap around the track in “the Beast,” the president’s armored vehicle, followed by his motorcade ahead of the race’s start, while the Foo Fighters’ “There Goes My Hero” blared comically loud throughout the track.
If it was meant as an ironic gesture, it was lost on the crowd who cheered the flyover of Air Force One and the arrival of Trump’s motorcade.
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Sunday’s event marked Trump’s second episode of crowd work in as many weeks; his attendance at the Super Bowl last weekend in New Orleans also drew a reaction (one that was notably more mixed) from the fans in that arena.
But his latest — and expensive — stunts serve as a reminder that there remain limits to his administration’s purported goals to cut “waste” in government spending.
His appearance at Sunday’s race prompted social media users to ask “where’s DOGE?” referring to Elon Musk‘s so-called Department of Government Efficiency operation taking the axe to federal agencies.
Trump, during his first term, left Washington, D.C. for his personal properties frequently and over the course of four years spent more than 300 days at his golf courses and other resorts.
Those visits generated massive Secret Service expenditures, and the total cost of protecting him during his first term stretched into the tens of millions of dollars.
That figure doesn’t include the costs incurred by local law enforcement agencies, which also must take on additional expenses including overtime shifts for officers when the president visits.
In Palm Beach County, where his Mar-a-Lago estate is located, officials estimated in January that the region will incur expenses of $35 to $40 million a year protecting Trump and his family.
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With Musk’s DOGE operation at the helm (which lacks congressional authority or oversight), the Trump administration has threatened mass firings at agencies across the federal government at such a pace that in several instances victims of overzealous Musk acolytes have had to be re-hired.
Many examples exist but the most glaring was a report Friday that revealed Musk’s team had fired experts at the National Nuclear Safety Administration, only to immediately seek their return after realizing they had just sacked hundreds of people at the agency that oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
The power wielded by Musk and DOGE — coupled with the Tesla CEO’s own insistence on being omnipresent at the White House and in the president’s inner circle — has led to sneering accusations referring to Musk as the “real” president. He has yet to run afoul of Trump, however, which is rare for an ally of the president on camera (and on Twitter) as often as Musk.
The president will return to Washington on Monday after spending the night at his Mar-a-Lago compound.
