Like me, you probably thought Donald Trump was joking when he boasted that his supporters are so stupid, they’d still support him if he murdered someone on 5th Avenue in broad daylight. Well, the joke’s been on us ever since they elected him president of the United States.
Now he seems hell-bent on playing us for suckers every which way but loose. No con has been more galling in this respect than Trump propagating the big lie that serving as president is costing him billions.
In fact, Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself in so many brazen ways that everyone – from members of Congress to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington – is suing him for violating the emoluments clause of the US Constitution. That clause prohibits the president from accepting benefits to his business from foreign governments without congressional approval.
Of course, Trump makes a show of giving away his presidential salary. Never mind that, with a wink, a Saudi prince and his entourage could cover that annual salary with one weekend stay at any one of his many golf resorts.
This is why Trump’s charity smacks of a bank robber tipping the teller $100 after making off with $100,000. Here in part is how I decried this shameless bait and switch in “Trump, Jared, and Ivanka Foregoing Salaries Is Just Another Bait and Switch,” April 3, 2017:
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Trump’s spinmeisters are asserting that the country should be grateful for his, Jared, and Ivanka’s sacrifice. Never mind that public-spirited people are usually the ones who are grateful for the honor of serving their country, especially in the White House. …
Congress should pass a law requiring all federal employees to take their salaries. Because it’s a patent insult for rich people to pretend they’re doing the American people a favor by forgoing theirs. This government pays defense contractors $100,000 for a toilet for Christ’s sake! It can easily pay their salaries.
More to the point, it’s hardly a sacrifice if the members of this nepotistic triumvirate forgo hundreds of thousands in government salaries only to use their positions to generate hundreds of millions in private income. This is a bait and switch worthy of the Art of the Steal. …
Trump spent the past eight years criticizing Obama for ‘wasting taxpayers’ money’ on personal travel, especially to play golf. He even vowed he would be so committed to working for the American people that, if elected president, he would never leave the White House. …
As of this writing, Trump has spent nine weekends in a row wasting taxpayers’ money on personal travel to one or another of his resorts, where he spends as much time promoting sales as he does playing golf. By comparison, at this point in his presidency, Obama had yet to play a single round of golf.
Trump is a brazen shyster. Unfortunately, his election proved that far too many Americans are suckers who blissfully defied my warning in “Trump for President? Don’t Be a Sucker,” April 8, 2011. But it does not bode well that this bait and switch with salaries is only the latest example of his intent to play them (and us) as such — for all it’s worth.
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Given the alarms I was already sounding in that April 2017 commentary, this latest score comes as no surprise:
President Donald Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago on Friday evening for the 29th golf-related trip of his presidency to his for-profit Palm Beach, Florida, resort, raising his total taxpayer golf tab to $133.8 million.
That figure translates to 334 years of the presidential salary that Trump and his supporters frequently boast he is not taking.
(HuffPost, February 14, 2020)
Ka-ching, suckers!
Incidentally, I’ve come to appreciate that the Barnumesque idiom that explains Trump’s success is not that there’s a sucker born every minute. Rather, it’s that people like to be amused even when they know they’re being deceived. Moreover, it’s arguable that Trump has exploited this idiom more effectively than any shyster in the history of the world, including P.T. Barnum himself.
Meanwhile, this bait and switch comes laden with trademark Trumpian hypocrisy. Because, despite criticizing Obama for playing too much golf, Trump has spent two-and-a-half times as many days on golf courses as Obama had done at this same point in his first term.
Frankly, never before in US history has a president spent so much time doing so little for the American people while doing so much for himself.
That said, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge championing boycotts of his businesses, which led to commentaries like “Becoming President Proving Worst Business Deal Trump Ever Made,” May 19, 2019. That effort stemmed from this:
We all knew that Trump was a self-aggrandizing buffoon. …
I urge the rich folks he depends on to patronize his eponymous resorts and buy up his eponymous condominiums to begin shunning him – just as they would a two-bit racist like David Duke. I urge this especially of the black Hollywood and sports stars he likes to feature as extras in his one-man freak show.
(“Trump for President? Don’t Be a Sucker!” The iPINIONS Journal, April 8, 2011)
Sure enough:
Trump Tower, once the crown jewel in Donald Trump’s property empire, now ranks as one of the least desirable luxury properties in Manhattan. … Trump’s name has been a huge turnoff in liberal New York City. …
Most condo owners who sold since 2016 have recorded a loss … ‘no one wants in that building,’ says one former owner.
(Bloomberg, May 14, 2019)
According to a report published in the October 23, 2019, edition of Forbes, nine buildings (including one hotel in Toronto and one in Panama) and two skating rinks have removed Trump’s name from their signage since his election in 2016. In fact, New Yorkers found him so toxic, they forced him to abandon that fabled Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York City to make his gated and moated Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach his new permanent residence.
Here is how the New York Times trumpeted his humiliation with a banner headline on October 31, 2019:
Trump, Lifelong New Yorker, Declares Himself a Resident of Florida
The president filed a “declaration of domicile” last month saying that his property in Palm Beach will be his permanent residence.
But I fear that, just as playing golf and receiving emoluments are more than compensating for giving away his presidential salary, striking real-estate deals will more than compensate for losing his (US) branding income. This, because Trump has made clear his intent to strike such deals with autocrats like Erdogan of Turkey, Orban of Hungary, Duterte of the Philippines, and yes, Putin of Russia. Hell, he has even boasted about showing Kim of North Korea a promotional video on how he can dot that country’s undeveloped beaches with high-end condos and golf courses.
The problem is that Trump has shown no compunction about betraying US allies or bartering away US security interests to pursue, let alone to consummate, such deals. The South Koreans and Syrian Kurds would readily attest to his venality and treachery in this respect.
Yet, despite all the above, everyone is “shocked, shocked” to learn that there are more shady dealings going on in that Trump hotel in Washington, DC, than in that casino in the movie Casablanca. But this is easily the most open and notorious way Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself.
Related commentaries:
bait and switch…
worst business deal ever…