Real estate mogul Donald Trump said Monday that ending White House tours because of sequestration cuts made the country look "awfully pathetic," and that he would be open to funding the tours out of his own pocket.
“Well I guess it’s political. They want to hurt the people. They want to do something to make their point," Trump said of the White House's decision to cancel the tours, adding that the decision was "just really ridiculous."
"It does make us look awfully bad and awfully pathetic,” Trump continued.
The reality television show host made the comments on "Fox and Friends," and was asked about a tweet from former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who suggested that Trump should offer to fund the tours.
"I think it’s so nice of Newt to suggest that," Trump said. "I don’t know anything about it, I'm hearing about it for the first time. I like Newt a lot. I didn’t hear this, but it sounds reasonable to me. Why not?”
NBC News reported last week that the canceled White House tours save the Secret Service around $74,000 a week, and would save around $2 million by the end of the fiscal year. Some 37 Secret Service officers are employed to staff the tours.
Multiple conservative commentators have offered to donate money to keep the tours going, but White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday that it was likely impossible to set up a way, under the sequester, for outside individuals to fund the operation.
"My guess is that it's not," Earnest said. "And the reason for that is the sequester mandates across-the-board, non-strategic, indiscriminate cuts to the budget. It allows very little, if any, flexibility for those who are administering the budget. And it means agency heads are put in a very difficult position of choosing between two bad options."
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