To recap: Trump pledged to take no White House salary. He then revised that promise and vowed to donate the money to charity. Spicer then announced this week that the president’s first taxpayer-funded paycheck would go to a taxpayer-funded agency.

If Trump is going to renege on a promise to forgo a salary because he learned only recently that the job to which he applied bars him from refusing a paycheck, he could at least give the money directly back to the taxpayers. He could assist, say, one of the privately held veterans groups he talked about during the election.

Funneling additional tax dollars into a federal agency is about as far off as possible from the spirit of pledging to take no White House salary at all, and it is amazing to see certain members of Trump’s base cheer it.