The impulse to live luxuriously on taxpayer dollars has become a pattern for this administration. It is not the only form of impropriety on display. The president has surrounded himself with crooks and liars throughout his political career, and there are more traditional forms of corruption at play in the administration. There was Carl Icahn apparently using a post as a senior adviser to further his own personal interests. There’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross claiming he would divest holdings but not actually doing so (which of course echoes the non-divestment of the president himself). There are warnings that Carson could be using his position to advance his son’s business interests.

But why has extravagant spending around public displays of status become a distinctive form of corruption for this particular administration? It’s probably impossible to answer that question definitively, but a few informed guesses make the excessive spending seem like a paradigmatic Trump administration scandal.

One is that the president sets the tone for the rest of the administration. The George W. Bush administration began with a heavy focus on MBA-style management, reflecting its MBA-holding president. The Obama administration valorized Ivy League intellectualism. It stands to reason that in an presidency helmed by a man whose name is synonymous with decadent displays of luxury, and who is famous for flying around the country in a private jet with his name on the side, Cabinet members would seek to emulate the same luxurious jet-setting lifestyle, with their own first-class travel, stays in luxurious hotels, and imposing security details. (Maybe it’s not a coincidence that Bill Clinton, who in his lack of personal discipline shows a faint similarity to Trump, had his own travel-related scandal early in his presidency.)

The problem is that Trump’s private jet was just that: private, and paid for by himself. What these Cabinet secretaries are attempting to do is to live a Trump-lite lifestyle on the taxpayer’s dime. In so doing, they often break rules about spending, as in Carson and Shulkin’s cases; even when they do not, it looks awful, since no one wants to see their hard-earned money put toward lavish travel by political appointees. (The costs of Trump’s travel have also drawn criticism, though the rules and expectations around presidents are different from Cabinet secretaries.)

Trump also sets a tone for how his aides approach the job. If one thinks of one’s self as a public servant, one is less likely to feel comfortable traveling extravagantly on the public dime. Trump seldom talks about public service, and offers little indication that he thinks of himself as a public servant. Instead, he’s a guy who’s doing the nation a favor by striding into office to make it great again, and he’s not afraid to grouse about it. “I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” he said last year. “This is more work than in my previous life.” He has also mixed his own private business interests with the government in an unprecedented manner. If government officials view themselves as doing citizens a favor, they’re more likely to see first-class plane tickets as deserved recompense for their troubles.