(Slate) — We can’t blame the Trump administration for everything. “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” as President Trump said in February. Same for all the vacancies in the federal government—who could have predicted those would come up?
But when it comes to doing a subpar job of planning the annual Easter Egg Roll, a 138-year-old White House tradition, the administration has nowhere to look but in the mirror. The New York Times blew the lid off this scandal in Tuesday’s paper, with just a little under a week to go until E-day, Monday’s do-or-die event. Though a White House spokeswoman said it was “just not accurate” to predict a less-grand Easter Egg Roll than in past years, the numbers tell a different story:
The evidence points to a quickly thrown-together affair that people close to the planning said would probably draw about 20,000 people — substantially smaller than last year’s Easter Egg Roll, which drew 37,000 — and be staffed by 200 volunteers, one-fifth of the usual number. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe the plans for the Easter Egg Roll, which are still evolving just a week before the event.