Melania and Barron live in NYC in Trump Tower; Eric and Donald Jr. travel the world doing Trump business; Donald himself makes regular trips to Mar-a-Lago to play golf. And the citizenry pays for all of this, while Trump and the GOP aggressively attack government programs that provide benefits to anyone but the rich.
Estimates and analyses of the cost of the Trump family’s living arrangements and travel abound, but there is no doubt at all that outrage is high. And it certainly is an embarrassing spectacle. Trump wallows in his luxury and power like a pig wallows in garbage. From gold plated toilet fixtures to private jets to multiple palaces to a string of trophy wives to…. And always with that shit-eating grin.
But I think all this outrage about cost misses the real outrage of Trump’s lifestyle. Rich people are often quite vulgar and tasteless; Trump is particularly so, but there is nothing really surprising in this. Nor is it surprising that so much of the cost to taxpayers goes directly into Trump’s pocket as the government pays for the use of his properties. Trump monetized his campaign at the expense of the GOP, and now he has monetized the Presidency.
What is surprising is the way that Trump’s role as President has simply been absorbed into his personal life. Trump the international entrepreneur, Trump the golfer, Trump the man of leisure does not have to adapt to the demands of the Presidency. Rather, the Presidency must be adapted to the requirements of Trump. And so he mixes business deals with foreign relations. His children conduct the family business with Secret Service protection and security clearances. The infrastructure of the executive follows him up and down the eastern seaboard, and the business of government is conducted in Trump’s favorite wallowing grounds. The Presidency has become simply another profit-seeking initiative of the Trump Organization.
This is not the way of a democratic leader; it is the way of a monarch. One of the founders’ greatest fears, one that roiled the discussions of the Constitutional Convention, was that a President would shortly become a king. It has taken longer than the founders likely thought, but it has finally come to pass.
Nor is this really surprising. Considerable power has accrued to the Executive branch in the past 4 or 5 decades, and Bush 2 and Obama both claimed powers of imprisonment and execution without judicial review that any king would rightly prize. And now Trump insists that he should be able to live like a king. Well, why shouldn’t he?
One thing, at any rate, becomes clear when we recognize that Trump fancies himself a king, and that is exactly where Paul Ryan stands in all this.
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