A top aide to House Speaker Mike Johnson and other congressional staffers planned to jet off on a luxurious tour through Italy and France two weeks before the midterms, a new report alleges.
The official trip promised a visit to a Ferrari factory near Bologna, day trips to France’s Champagne region, and stops at luxury brands in Milan or Florence, NBC News reports, citing a memo including a draft itinerary.
Given Johnson’s role in cheerleading Trump’s agenda, the memo offered a striking rationale for the weeklong trip: engaging with European countries on matters related to the impact of the president’s tariffs.
The revelation about the plush European getaway lands as a slap in the face to Americans grappling with a cost-of-living crunch that has forced many to rethink or scrap travel, with affordability emerging as the foremost issue in the midterms.
After NBC News asked about the trip, Johnson’s office said Wednesday that it had been called off because of a conflict.
The memo, emailed to U.S. Embassy personnel in Rome and Paris, said Johnson’s senior policy and tax adviser, Curt Beaulieu, would lead a staff delegation of Republican and Democratic staffers to Italy and France during the week of Oct. 19, according to NBC News.
The delegation’s European tour was slated to begin in Vicenza or a nearby city, where the staffers would visit the 173rd Airborne Mobile Brigade Combat Team and the U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa, according to the draft itinerary.
From there, the trip would take a decidedly more luxurious turn. The group would head to Bologna for a Ferrari factory visit, then go to Parma for a stop at Barilla, the Italian pasta and cheese giant.
The itinerary then called for the delegation to travel to “Milan or Florence” to visit “luxury brand goods” before receiving a debrief from embassy officials.
The final leg would take the group on a plane to Paris, where the itinerary said they would “do day trips to the Champagne region and OECD to discuss trade and taxes,” referring to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The junket was billed as a response to the fallout from Trump’s tariffs, even if the itinerary happened to whisk the delegation through some of Europe’s most coveted vacation destinations.
“The purpose of the trip is to engage European and U.S. government and industry officials related to the impact of U.S. tariffs and taxes,” the memo said, according to NBC News.
This summer, Trump threatened a 100 percent tariff on French wine and Champagne unless France dropped its tax on U.S. tech companies, after threatening tariffs on luxury and fashion goods last year. He also imposed high tariffs on imported automobiles last year, before reaching a deal with the European Union to cap U.S. tariffs on E.U. goods at 15 percent.
Asked about the trip, Johnson’s office told NBC News, “Senior congressional staff of both parties routinely lead staff delegations to allied countries and trading partners for parliamentary and private sector engagements to strengthen the working relationships between our countries and their key industries.”
But the itinerary planned by the Louisiana Republican’s office raises serious questions, according to Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of government affairs at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight.
“In theory, you want members of Congress and their staff to be going into the field and learning something and maybe investigating something, getting some up-close and personal understanding of the issue that they’re supposed to be legislating on. That’s probably a good use of time in a lot of cases,” Hedtler-Gaudette said.
“But what they end up being, or at least what they look like, is just a taxpayer-funded vacation to exotic locations,” he continued. “You’ve got the Ferrari racetrack that you get to play around on or the Louis Vuitton gift bag you might be getting in Milan. I’m sure those are enjoyable inducements to the whole enterprise.”
Johnson’s office offered no word on who would have picked up the tab.
It referred the Daily Beast back to its statement to NBC News when reached for comment, declining to elaborate on the trip’s luxurious stops, why it was canceled, or whether it would have been taxpayer-funded.
