What makes you think he was motivated by a "personal distaste for culture"? You can Google photos of him attending the Met, Broadway, and other New York cultural events, going back decades.
It's a basic tenet of Conservatism that such things should be paid for by the private sector. Or at the very least they should be a very low priority for a government that is already $21 trillion in debt. (and yes, some of us are motivated by the fact that we feel PBS/NPR give short-shrift to our points of view, while still taking our money).
Not that I am going to defend him here, as the way he has handled this made clear that he was not motivated by any principles that involve fiscal responsibility.
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