The Weekly season 1, episode 5 recap: Inauguration, Inc.

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THE WEEKLY “Inauguration, Inc.” Episode 5 (Airs Sunday; June 30, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: New York Times Reporter Saron LaFraniere reads a document with the Executive Director of George W. Bush’s Inaugural committee Greg Jenkins. CR: FX

This episode of The Weekly looks all the way back to the inauguration of President Trump to highlight a major problem in Washington.

Maggie Haberman, a New York Times White House correspondent, leads and narrates this episode of The Weekly that centers around how much money was raised (and spent) during Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Joining her in this episode are investigative reporter Sharon LaFraniere, Washington investigative correspondent Mark Mazzetti, Washington reporter Kenneth P. Vogel and Washington investigative correspondent Matthew Rosenberg.

Yes, there are a lot of reporters in this episode and once you see how dense this story is, you’ll understand why.

Let’s start at the top. The episode digs into the amount of money raised for Trump’s inauguration—$107 million, the most in history. In fact, it doubles the previous record (held by Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration) of $53 million.

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Interviews with Greg Jenkins (who was in charge of George W. Bush’s second inauguration) and Steve Kerrigan (in charge of both Obama inaugurations) ask the obvious question: Where on earth did all of that money go?

Haberman explains that, by tradition, Congress hosts the actual inauguration. Everything outside of that official ceremony (i.e. the parades, concerts, dinners, parties, etc.) are up to the President-elect, who selects a Presidential Inaugural Committee to raise money for those events. For Trump, the chairman of that committee was Tom Barrack, the real estate investor who sold Trump the Plaza Hotel.

This episode features a couple of surprises in terms of who The Weekly was able to round up for interviews. One surprise is Steve Bannon talking about meeting with Barrack about the inauguration plans. Bannon claims his idea was to skip the expensive aspects in favor of appearing different from the previous administrations. In fact, it was his goal to spend $1 less than what Obama spent.

His idea didn’t win out.

Anyway, while interviewing Jenkins and Kerrigan, LaFraniere shows them documents the Times had received from a source that showed how the Trump organization spent the funds raised for the inauguration.

As the episode points out, the issue isn’t that money is missing. The issue is that almost every penny of this outrageous $107 million is accounted for. It’s best captured by a flabbergasted Jenkins trying to figure out how and why the Trump inauguration spent $30 million more on events alone than his team raised for the total inauguration.

Where did the money go?

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