“Nice hotel. Under budget and ahead of schedule. Isn’t that nice? No, it is a great honor. This is our brand-new ballroom.”
Donald J. Trump free-associating and praising his new D.C. hotel
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I knew a guy years ago that I’m tempted to say reminds me of the Republican presidential candidate, but i can honestly say no one really reminds me of Donald J. Trump. But this guy I knew does remind me of Trump in one specific way.
This really rich guy had a lot of money, several homes, expensive cars and he spent serious money on his apparel. You may know the type. Silk shirts, custom made sport coats – loud plaids and patterns – patent leather shoes. Expensive it was, but classy not so much. All of which proves something my old man used to say: you can spend a lot of money and still be a bum. A thousand dollars spent on a pair of polyester pants still means you’re wearing polyester pants.
The one and only time I have stayed in a Trump branded hotel – my excuse was that it was on a trip for a client and they booked the room – was in Toronto some years ago. I thought of that guy with the patent leather shoes as I entered my room. Not my style. Not my taste. Too much bling, not enough class. No portrait of The Great Man hung over the king sized bed, but you could feel him in the room. Creepy and did I say tacky?
Stay Classy…
I know that writing about a presidential candidate on the basis of his taste in bathroom faucets and bedroom headboards risks demeaning the whole idea of a presidential campaign, but let’s face it after praising Putin, fleecing his foundation, conning his contractors, harassing Hispanics, belittling blacks and assaulting half the population of the country this is where DJT has taken us.
Since I don’t understand – even a little – how anyone can support this guy based on his experience, temperament or policy ideas (he has, in order, no experience, a sociopath’s temperament and incoherent and dangerous ideas) then his taste – or lack thereof – seems to me to be completely fair game.
Political reporters assigned to cover Trump, the journalistic equivalent of a daily root canal, are still venting over the hoodwinking they suffered recently when the Republican candidate summoned them to his gaudy new Washington, D.C. hotel ostensibly to declare that he finally “believes” Barack Obama was born in the United States. He eventually got around to that statement, more or less, but spent most of his time before the cameras praising his new hotel.
I’ll never set foot in the dump.
I’ve been in the Old Post Office Building in Washington, D.C. – now the “newest luxury hotel” in the Capitol – and before Trump got hold of it the structure was all that he is not – full of detail, sensitive to history, a study in character, sturdy and principled. Some knot head at the General Services Administration (GSA) momentarily lost his/her mind and gave the job of “refurbishing” the building to Mr. Red Ties. Mistake.
Pray to God the man never gets any closer to the White House than the Presidential Suite at what use to be the Old Post Office. Still, as Monica Hesse of the Washington Post observed after spending a night in Trumpsalvania, the faux billionaire “has already taken over the city, at least in some filigreed, metaphorical way.”
One former GSA official recalled wondering, as BuzzFeed reported, “Are they going to tart the thing up? How do you maintain the dignity of the building?” You don’t. Not with Mr. Tasteless in town.
The “Deluxe” room was going for $805 a night when Hesse cased the joint last week. Online hotel booking sites were offering rooms for half that price more recently. I predict a lot of vacancies. Hesse wrote that the lobby was full of gawkers, but not guests. “Make America Curious Again.” For the reporter’s sake I hope Jeff Bezos approves her expense account.
The Quest to Be Taken Seriously…
Trump, it is increasingly clear, has spent his entire life trying and mostly failing to be taken seriously. The forthcoming Frontline documentary on PBS will apparently make that case explicitly with an interview by Roger Stone, the Nixon-era hatchet man who is now Donald’s conspiracy theory whisperer.
Stone says that Trump decided to run for president when Obama kneecapped him over the “birther” issue at the White House Correspondent’s dinner in 2011. Trump sat through Obama’s speech fuming all the way, unable to laugh at himself or the absurdity of the big lie he has been peddling for years. All the swell people in D.C. laughed at him. He was humiliated. He was made a fool. Worst of all he was made to look a fool by a smart black man in a tuxedo, a guy who has actually read books and written them and knows what the nuclear triad is all about.
Commander-in-Chief as revenge play
Trump both got mad and decided to get even after that dinner. He’d show ‘em – take a grand old historic building and make it an amusement park and, by the way take the White House, too. Comforting thought, heh? Commander-in-Chief as revenge play.
All the endless boasting, the pathological lying, the gaudy buildings, the slinky ex-and-current wives, the name plastered on everything (even the bath mats at Trump Toronto), the insults, the funny hair, it’s all an act. Most of us grow out of our insecurities or at least find a way to manage them. Instead Trump makes a play for the nuclear codes.
Most of us, assuming we had the ego or ambition to seek high public office, might actually try to assemble some degree of preparation for that task. You might invite interesting, informed people to help provide an education on all that you don’t know. You might read something beside your own Twitter feed. But that’s just too much work and too normal for a Great Man, particularly one in need of constant reassurance that he is the best thing since the invention of the Taco Bowl.
The radio host and essayist Garrison Keillor has, I think, nailed Trump better than anyone, better certainly than many reporters who struggle to treat this singularly abnormal man as though he was anything but abnormal.
Keillor, speaking directly to Mr. Needy, wrote recently in an essay: “The New York Times treats you like the village idiot. This is painful for a Queens boy trying to win respect in Manhattan where the Times is the Supreme Liberal Jewish Anglican Arbiter of Who Has The Smarts and What Goes Where. When you came to Manhattan 40 years ago, you discovered that in entertainment, the press, politics, finance, everywhere you went, you ran into Jews, and they are not like you: Jews didn’t go in for big yachts and a fleet of aircraft — they showed off by way of philanthropy or by raising brilliant offspring. They sympathized with the civil rights movement. In Queens, blacks were a threat to property values — they belonged in the Bronx, not down the street. To the Times, Queens is Cleveland. Bush league. You are Queens. The casinos were totally Queens, the gold faucets in your triplex, the bragging, the insults, but you wanted to be liked by Those People. You wanted Mike Bloomberg to invite you to dinner at his townhouse. You wanted the Times to run a three-part story about you, that you meditate and are a passionate kayaker and collect 14th-century Islamic mosaics. You wish you were that person but you didn’t have the time.”
They Know He’s a Huckster…
Most Republicans, of course, know all this. Even those who have endorsed the gaudy hotelier know it. Chris Christie knows it, but he’s grasping for any political life raft. Rudy Giuliani knows it, but he craves the spotlight almost as much as the guy from Queens. Ted Cruz – oh, boy – even Lyin’ Ted knows that the guy who insulted his wife and accused his dad of killing JFK is profoundly unfit. John McCain, remember him, Mr. Straight Talk? He knows. He wouldn’t let Trump close to Sedona or within a football field of his wife and daughters.
They all know, as Garrison Keillor also wrote, that “Trump is a man whom few Republicans would care to invite into their homes. So what’s going on here? An epidemic of hippocampus poisoning from bad enzymes in cheap beers? The man is a fraud, a compulsive liar and a clueless playboy whose presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the country. If you would make us the laughingstock of the world just to irk your liberal sister-in-law, you are someone who should not be allowed to come within 500 yards of an elementary school.”
But the otherwise smart people who have endorsed and enabled this joker have twisted themselves into a political pretzel. They’re not voting their conscience, but their ambition. They justify their betrayal of democracy, not to mention common sense, by selling their souls for control of the Senate or a seat on the Supreme Court. They’ve bet the country that they can control a race baiting, foreign policy ignoramus. They can’t. Most of them don’t even want to mention his name. They wouldn’t share a Big Mac with the guy, but he’s got to be better than Hillary, right? But they know – they really know – that he’s not.
Only Business…
Trump, of course, got the lease on The Old Post Office by promising a bunch of things that he has now completely reneged on and, of course, he worked every angle to minimize his tax burden and cage ever subsidy. It’s only business, right?
I think the whole hotel thing and Trump’s desire to be taken seriously and to not be humiliated go a long way to explain his unwillingness to release his tax returns. He may yet get away with being the first candidate since Nixon not to reveal his worth, his charitable contributions, his debts, his overseas bank accounts, his Russian ties, etc. etc.
But his real motive is not to be shamed. He’s not worth what he says he’s worth. He’s likely not paid a cent in taxes for years. He’s almost certainly has dodgy investments and a mountain of debt. The Washington Post’s remarkable stories have confirmed his philanthropy consists of using other people’s money to buy paintings of himself and cover his legal bills. It’s all a scam. And the tax returns would prove it, which is why we’ll never see them.
Despite much of the politics that take place there Washington, D.C. is a great place to visit. Go see the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the Mall and the National Gallery. Visit the new African-American Museum, a place where you’re not likely to encounter Donald Trump or many of his followers. Great restaurants dot the city. Rock Creek Park is fun for a walk. And if you want to stay in a really great hotel, classy and tasteful try the Willard, the Hay-Adams or the Madison. Walk by The Old Post Office, gaze up at the handsome clock tower and contemplate the seat of government. Hope Trump’s seat never gets near it.
By the way, that Toronto hotel that I still causes a cringe when I think about two nights there, well – it’s troubled. Trump doesn’t own it, as usual with his “real estate empire,” he just “manages” it for the real owners and not well by all accounts.
As the Toronto Star reported earlier this year: “After 15 years of controversy, an investor revolt and now a U.S. Republican leadership campaign that has seen the billionaire businessman morph from bombastic long shot to presidential prospect, Talon International, the property developer, wants to erase his name from the Toronto skyline. They believe Donald Trump has tarnished his brand and the tower that wears it.”
Imagine what he’ll do to the country.