Tag: President Plutocrat

Journalists and journalistic outlets must never again agree to meet with Trump off the record.

Margaret Sullivan at the Washington Post says what the tv people did wrong yesterday and the Times people did right today.

The disaster yesterday:

Brandon Friedman, a Virginia-based public relations executive, offered his theory on Twitter: “They walked into an ambush, agreed not to talk about it, then Trump went straight to the Post with his version.”

Then it was just a hop, skip and jump to a big headline on the Drudge Report, with its huge worldwide traffic: “Trump Slams Media Elite, Face to Face.” As Business Insider politics editor Oliver Darcy aptly put it, that is “how a lot of America will see this.”

The result for the president-elect: He once again was able to use the media as his favorite foil. Having a whipping boy is more important than ever now that the election is over and there is no Democratic opponent to malign at every turn.

And yet at the same time he wants to be besties with the New York Times. It’s as if his mind goes blank every few minutes and he reboots and starts all over from scratch.

On Tuesday, shockingly, a new melodrama arose: Trump’s planned meeting at the New York Times was canceled, then restored.

The Times played it right. Despite a tweet attack from the president-elect, editors refused to go the off-the-record route with Trump, which was his preference, for obvious reasons — because he wanted again to control the story.

With the exception of a brief off-the-record conversation between Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger and the president-elect, the meeting was fair game for news stories — as it should be.

Off-the-record was a mistake for the TV people, and it would have been a mistake for the Times. The paper successfully called Trump’s bluff. As much as he professes to despise the Times, he remains in some ways the Queens boy who lusted after Manhattan success and acceptance.

Doesn’t he though. That’s why I call him Donnie from Queens.

Always on the record with Donnie from Queens. Never trust him.

A few years ago Stephen Fry drove around the US in a London cab with a tv crew. I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the resulting tv series, and liked them. One of the places he visited was Atlantic City…

Would it not have been better to let the home of Monopoly, this seedy resort town and remnant of another way of holidaying, simply fall into the sea? Instead we are given an obscene Gehenna, a place of such tawdry, tacky, tinselly, tasteless and trumpery tat that the desire to run away clutching my hand to my mouth is overwhelming.  But no, I must brave the interior of the most tawdry and literally trumpery tower of them all … The Trump Taj Mahal.

For taking the name of the priceless mausoleum of Agra, one of the beauties and wonders of the world, for that alone Donald Trump should be stripped naked and whipped with scorpions all along the boardwalk. It is as if a giant toad has raped a butterfly. I am not an enemy of developers, per se; I know that people must make money from construction and development projects, I know that there is a demand and that casinos will be built. I can pardon Trump all his vanities and shady junk-bonded dealings and financial brinkmanship, I would even forgive him his hair, were it not that everything he does is done with such poisonously atrocious taste, such false glamour, such shallow grandeur, such cynical vulgarity. At least Las Vegas developments, preposterous as they are, have a kind of joy and wit to them … oh well, it is no good putting off the moment, Stephen. In you go.

He’s exactly right, isn’t he – such poisonously atrocious taste, such false glamour, such shallow grandeur, such cynical vulgarity. That living room in Trump Tower…

Here’s another image of that living room, the one that inspired me to go looking for more:

It is repellent. It would be less hideous if he had simply constructed the whole thing out of blocks of cash.

He goes in.

All you need is here: mini-streets complete with Starbucks for people who hate coffee and KFC for people who can’t abide food; there is even a shop devoted entirely to the personality of Donald Trump himself, with quotes from the great man all over the walls: ‘You’ve got to think anyway, so why not think big?’ and similar comforting and illuminating insights that enrich and nourish the hungry human soul.

There’s a lot of horrible tat for sale.

There is nothing here that I would not be ashamed to be seen owning. Not a thing. Oh, must we stay here one minute longer?

Tony Husband

Then he goes on into the casino.

Above my head glitter the chandeliers that for some reason Trump is so proud of.

‘$14 million worth of German crystal chandeliers, including 245,000 piece chandeliers in the casino alone, each valued at a cost of $250,000, and taking over 20 hours to hang,’ trumpets the publicity.

‘An entire two-year output of Northern Italy’s Carrera marble quarries – the marble of choice for all of Michelangelo’s art – adorn the hotel’s lobby, guest rooms, casino, hallways and public areas.’

And there you have it. It’s expensive. The end. That’s his entire aesthetic: it’s expensive.

Writing in the present (or rather, last April), Stephen Fry sums up:

Do please believe that to decry such offences against taste is emphatically not a kind of snobbery. Doubtless Trump and his supporters would see any attack on him on aesthetic grounds as sneering metropolitan elitism because they would choose not to understand the moral dimension at play here. It must be understood that bad taste on the monstrous scale that Trump disseminates and embodies is the most brutal crime against the human spirit – a snobbery that looks down with contempt.

If you don’t know Peter York’s book Dictators’ Homes you really should try to get hold of it. It demonstrates quite wonderfully and hilariously how a gross, shatteringly greedy appetite for power and gross, shatteringly vulgar taste go hand in hand. The ‘ruthless, ill-educated, ignorant and trashily vainglorious’ who want to rule us at any price can be read through their bedrooms, dining-rooms and studies.

And, leafing through the book, whose execrable, vomitous taste do you think is shown most exactly to match that of Trump and his towers and foul resort hotels? Why Saddam Hussein’s of course. Indistinguishable.

Maek you think.

H/t Emily

The vulgarity of Trump Palace is breathtaking. US Magazine did a piece on it a year ago, so we can see how hideous it really is.

Compare the White House.

You don’t need eye protection in the second place.

It gets worse. The Times asks questions about the conflicts of interest.

Even if he no longer manages his businesses directly, Mr. Trump will continue to own them and his family will be involved in deals, both foreign and domestic, to develop real estate projects or license his brand. He will still be aware of the existence of his business interests and how his actions as president will affect them. The conflicts between his private interests and his public role will be impossible to untangle.

And it’s not as if he’s such an obviously principled, public spirited, integrity-endowed guy that we can just trust him to get it right. No, it’s not. Very much the opposite.

And now we get the actual friction sites, and it’s a horror-show.

For example, the profitability of his investments in the Middle East, India, Turkey, the former Soviet republics and elsewhere could put his financial interests directly at odds with American foreign policy, whether it takes the form of sanctions against those governments or American investment and aid deals. In such situations, will he act to protect or grow his family’s assets or advance the interests of the country? His businesses currently owe hundreds of millions of dollars to Deutsche Bank, which is negotiating a multibillion-dollar mortgage settlement with the Department of Justice. How would the public know if he or his Justice Department softened its stance because it involved a bank to which he owes money, or whether that bank cut him a sweetheart deal in hopes of currying favor?

Wow. That is just mind-boggling.

Mr. Trump will also face numerous conflicts with enforcement of domestic laws and regulations. For instance, the people he appoints to the National Labor Relations Board will be in charge of investigating complaints by workers at his hotels and golf courses. The board on Nov. 3 ordered the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas to bargain with a union representing its housekeeping staff, maintenance workers and other employees. Will a board made up of Trump appointees choose to enforce similar decisions? Will the Justice Department be willing to investigate and bring cases against his businesses for, say, racially discriminatory actions? The fact is, any decision by the labor board — or by any agency in the Trump administration — that affects the Trump businesses would be tainted by a conflict of interest.

Mind.boggling.

Trump the populist, elected, we’re told, by people who want to overturn the DC Establishment and speak up for the workers.

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.

Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications Commission.

Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist whose clients include Devon Energy and Encana Oil and Gas, holds the “energy independence” portfolio.

Michael Torrey, a lobbyist who runs a firm that has earned millions of dollars helping food industry players such as the American Beverage Association and the dairy giant Dean Foods, is helping set up the new team at the Department of Agriculture.

Well…maybe they wear baseball caps and drop their ‘g’s while doing it?

Mr. Trump was swept to power in large part by white working-class voters who responded to his vow to restore the voices of forgotten people, ones drowned out by big business and Wall Street. But in his transition to power, some of the most prominent voices will be those of advisers who come from the same industries for which they are being asked to help set the regulatory groundwork.

The president-elect’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, declined a request for comment, as did nearly a dozen corporate executives, consultants and lobbyists serving on his transition team, which was outlined in a list distributed widely in Washington on Thursday.

It’s almost as if the whole thing has turned out to be a giant fake. Who could have seen that coming?

“This whole idea that he was an outsider and going to destroy the political establishment and drain the swamp were the lines of a con man, and guess what — he is being exposed as just that,” said Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush before becoming a speechwriter for George W. Bush. “He is failing the first test, and he should be held accountable for it.”

Should, but won’t. This is TrumpAmerica now.

Transition teams help new presidents pick the new cabinet, as well as up to 4,000 political appointees who will take over top posts in agencies across the government. President Obama, after he was first elected, instituted rules that prohibited individuals who had served as registered lobbyists in the prior year from serving as transition advisers in the areas in which they represented private clients. They were also prohibited, after the administration took power, from lobbying in the parts of the government they helped set up.

Well, yes, but he was born in Kenya, so it doesn’t count.

The energy sector is especially well supplied with interested parties.

Mr. Catanzaro’s client list is a who’s who of major corporate players — such as the Hess Corporation and Devon Energy — that have tried to challenge the Obama administration’s environmental and energy policies on issues such as how much methane gas can be released at oil and gas drilling sites, lobbying disclosure reports show.

He also worked with oil industry players to help push through major legislation goals, such as allowing the export of crude oil. He will now help pick Mr. Trump’s energy team.

Michael McKenna, another lobbyist helping to pick key administration officials who will oversee energy policy, has a client list that this year has included the Southern Company, one of the most vocal critics of efforts to prevent climate change by putting limits on emissions from coal-burning power plants.

Advisers with ties to other industries include Martin Whitmer, who is overseeing “transportation and infrastructure” for the Trump transition. He is the chairman of a Washington law firm whose lobbying clients include the Association of American Railroads and the National Asphalt Pavement Association.

David Malpass, the former chief economist at Bear Stearns, the Wall Street investment bank that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, is overseeing the “economic issues” portfolio of the transition, as well as operations at the Treasury Department. Mr. Malpass now runs a firm called Encima Global, which sells economic research to institutional investors and corporate clients.

Mr. Eisenach, as a telecom industry consultant, has worked to help major cellular companies fight back against regulations proposed by the F.C.C.that would mandate so-called net neutrality — requiring providers to give equal access to their networks to outside companies. He is now helping to oversee the rebuilding of the staff at the F.C.C.

Dan DiMicco, a former chief executive of the steelmaking company Nucor, who now serves on the board of directors of Duke Energy, is heading the transition team for the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Mr. DiMicco has long argued that China is unfairly subsidizing its manufacturing sector at the expense of American jobs.

Swamp: drained!

And then there’s that whole thing about the conflicts of interest. Sam Thielman in the Guardian:

When President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House next year he will bring with him potential conflicts of interest across all areas of government that are unprecedented in American history.

Trump, who manages a sprawling, international network of businesses, has thus far refused to put his businesses into a blind trust the way his predecessors in the nation’s highest office have traditionally done. Instead he has said his businesses will be run by his own adult children.

As someone on NPR said yesterday, that’s not a blind trust, that’s a 20/20 vision trust.

Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka Trump are all on the president-elect’s transition team executive committee, per ABC’s Candace Smith, as is Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

HONK. Conflict of interest, right there.

[A]ccording to regulators who have overseen potential conflicts of interests under two former presidents, Trump’s arrangements were unprecedented and present a host of issues.

This is in no way a blind trust, said Karl Sandstrom, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the regulatory body that oversees campaign finance, under Bill Clinton and George W Bush. “A blind trust is not anywhere near the same. You don’t still have access to the decision being made. That’s why you put assets in and don’t just have someone else manage the company,” he said. Trump’s assets will instead apparently remain united under his company, and operated under his name even if he is not directly in charge.

“Reagan spent some time in the private sector but he certainly wasn’t a CEO,” said Robert Lenhard, also a former FEC chair, appointed by George W Bush. “He wasn’t operating a set of companies like Trump is. Most of our presidents have come out of political careers – Eisenhower’s time out of office was mostly a hiatus between the military and the presidency.”

Trump on the other hand is a huckster. He’s in it for the bucks. That’s what he knows. That’s all he knows.

Trump owns hotels in Chicago, New York City, Las Vegas, Waikiki and, most recently, in Washington DC, just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. As with any hotel chain, the Trump Organization will oversee power, water, maintenance, security, billing and any number of other logistical details that will now essentially be negotiated between the provider and the family of the president.

Abroad, Trump holds properties in Istanbul, where his election was met with satisfaction by that country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as well as Mumbai, Vancouver and Seoul, among many others. With Trump’s children running his businesses, there is also the matter of their bearing his name, and thus the name of the president, anywhere in the world when they arrive to negotiate leases and construction deals.

Squalid, isn’t it.

Also in Russia, there are Trump’s ties to Paul Manafort, who ran his campaign from March to August. Manafort, who helped to install Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych as president in Ukraine, was named in a corruption investigation by a Ukrainian authority working with the FBI.

Then there is the matter of the president-elect’s stock portfolio. Trump has holdings in Dakota Access pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners. In his first 100 days, Trump has pledged to remove every impediment to the pipeline, which has been the subject of protests violently suppressed by police in North Dakota. He also owns stock in Facebook, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted that he was “feeling hopeful” on Wednesday, and in Bank of America – he has promised to deregulate the banking industry.

This should go well.