Cue the Oompa-Loompas and get the “BAD EGG” chute ready, because yet another naughty child has managed to get themselves booted from the ludicrously unsafe chocolate factory that is the Donald Trump White House. NBC News reports that Tom Price, Trump’s Secretary Of Health And Human Services, has resigned, shortly after Trump stated that he was still deciding whether to keep him on over a recent travel scandal.
Specifically, people were pissed off about Price’s use of chartered planes during his tenure in office, questioning why he was spending tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on trips only tangentially connected to his role as a cabinet secretary. (More expensively, he also allegedly used military vehicles for overseas flights, costing as much as $500,000). Politico writers Dan Diamond and Rachana Pradhan have done an extensive breakdown of Price’s various trips and the ways they played with the government’s ethics rules on travel spending; you can read the whole thing right here.
Meanwhile, Price’s bad optics are thought to be only part of why he was encouraged to kick himself to the curb. Unlike, say, Treasury secretary Tim Mnuchin—who’s also been dinged by the press for his federally funded travel habits—Price was already on the outs with Trump, who seems to have blamed him at least in part for the White House’s repeated failures to get Obamacare off the books.