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Watch Jeanine Pirro throw a tantrum over bottled water [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2025-05-22

Donald Trump’s latest pick for interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., appears to have discovered that federal employees are not exactly showered with perks—and she’s none too happy about it.

Former Fox News screecher Jeanine Pirro, a onetime judge who Trump tapped to be the top prosecutor in D.C. after his first pick Ed Martin flamed out, filmed an absolutely unhinged video of herself complaining about the $7-per-month “water club” at the U.S. Attorney’s office. She’s unhappy that employees have to chip in to pay for their own water delivery service and she’s annoyed that the water wasn’t delivered yesterday.

How dare the brave people who prosecute crimes be required to pay for a water cooler!

Pirro seems to think that the reason government workers only get bottled water on their own dime is that the government was frittering away money overseas via the United States Agency for International Development, which Donald Trump and his toadies effectively destroyed. Federal prosecutors don’t have free water, according to Judge Jeanine, because USAID was paying for “dance classes in Wuhan China and Sesame Street in Iraq.”

Truly a sophisticated understanding of government funding on display here. Yes, Jeanine, DOJ employees have to pay for their own water because Congress, via a lengthy process of debate and budgeting, chose instead to fund foreign development. This is a toddler’s view of how government spending works, as if all money is just in one big pot and can be divvied up anywhere on the fly.

Related | Yet another Fox pundit gets Trump gig after top choice crashes and burns

If this were someone other than Pirro, it might genuinely be that they didn’t know that an awful lot of public servants get the privilege of paying their own way for lavish perks like water—but Pirro knows better. Though it’s hard to remember that she once actually practiced law rather than just being a defamation machine on Fox News, she started her career as an assistant district attorney in Westchester County, New York. She is likely fully aware that public employees are nickel and dimed on any and all extras.

At the federal level, the general rule appears to be that the government can only pick up the tab for bottled water for employees if the tap water is unsafe to consume. Otherwise, water is a personal expense to be borne by the employee. And if some public servant just goes ahead and gets their employees some bottled water because, say, there are plumbing and sewer problems at the courthouse where they work, and tries to have the government pay for it? Here is an eight-page letter from the Government Accountability Office explaining why the person who certified those payments is personally liable now instead.

And it’s not just water. Here’s the GAO telling National Weather Service employees that the Department of Commerce is correct in refusing to provide disposable utensils to workers because that is not a proper use of public money appropriated to agencies and the employees couldn’t show that having utensils available to eat their food was “an essential part of accomplishing a statutory mission.” No disposable plates or utensils for Air Force Reserve Command employees either, per the GAO, because those are personal expenses.

Conservatives like Pirro hate federal workers and take every opportunity to bash them for supposedly being entitled, like when a whole bunch of her former Fox News colleagues called federal workers names including “worthless parasites.” GOP legislators relentlessly attack federal employee pay and benefits. They think federal workers are overpaid and they cheered when multibillionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency went on a tear and fired thousands of civilian employees willy-nilly.

There’s simply no world where Pirro and her ilk were yearning for a way to treat federal employees better, if only they weren’t thwarted by Congress wanting kids in Iraq to see Big Bird. Besides, if she really is so worried about the lack of workplace perks for federal prosecutors, she’s worth millions! Just cover the water club for everyone, Jeanine. Problem solved.

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