Let's not pretend like research funding was money well spent before Trump. It wasn't. If tax payers actually knew how research funding works in practice, they wouldn't want any of their tax dollars to be spent on it.

If $50 billion are spent on research, maybe $1 billion of the spending is actually worthwhile (totally made that number up), and that is better than $0 spent on research from a certain point of view. Wouldn't be my point of view though if I had to pay for it.