The White Home is filled with a lot wealthy historical past and custom — it helps inform the story of America itself. And it’s an extremely spectacular and intimidating venue for facilitating worldwide diplomacy.
As Michael Douglas’ President Andrew Shepherd says in “The American President,” “The White Home is the only best residence courtroom benefit within the trendy world.”
President Trump understands the worth of first impressions, even (and particularly) in the event that they’re not portray an correct image. He might have put gold leaf in his NYC loos, however he additionally inflated the worth of his properties and his personal internet price for years. He famously pretended to be his personal spokesman to seem extra established. He’s bought all the things from luxurious ties to luxurious homegoods, most of which had been made cheaply in China.
For Trump, you may neglect if it’s real or not — it simply has to look wealthy.
So nobody must be stunned that on his second-go-round at president, he determined the White Home — the folks’s home — wanted the Trump contact, too. Not recognized for subtlety, Trump’s already made noticeable changes, portray over fixtures within the Oval Workplace a garish gold, and festooning the place with gold vases, trophies, and coasters.
And now he’s constructing a brand new ballroom, very similar to the one he makes use of at Mar-a-Lago to host his company and political buddies.
The brand new ballroom will value $250 million, and Trump insists that it’s being completely funded by personal donors. Along with his penchant for deceptive about his personal expenditures, I suppose we’ll simply need to take his phrase for it.
However as America watches aghast that the White Home East Wing is being torn up, Trump is reveling within the destruction…er, building. At a Tuesday press convention he moaned, “You in all probability hear the attractive sound of building to the again. You hear that sound? Oh, that’s music to my ears. I like that sound. Different folks don’t prefer it. Once I hear that sound, it jogs my memory of cash.”
It’s not arduous to see why. Trump’s used the workplace of the presidency to rake within the money, boosting his private internet price by a document $3 billion simply since 2024.
In response to Forbes: “No president has used his place of energy to revenue as immensely as Trump.” He’s primarily carried out that with a crypto enterprise he introduced final September named World Liberty Monetary, and a memecoin, all of which he helped make doable by rolling again laws and signing favorable laws. How handy.
However that’s not all.
He’s introduced a brand new “Arc de Trump,” a construction that shall be constructed throughout from the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary. We don’t know the way a lot it would value or who’s paying for it.
He’s refurbishing a $400 million Qatari plane he was “gifted” in Might, which is estimated to value taxpayers greater than $1 billion. Trump says he’s donating the airplane to his presidential library basis.
A New York Instances report this week alleged Trump is asking the Justice Division to pay him $230 million personally, over its investigations into him, an idea he later defended.
That is all occurring whereas the federal government is shut down, and costing taxpayers $15 billion every week. And it’s occurring as Trump simply handed Argentina a $20 billion bailout whereas American farmers undergo beneath his dumb commerce struggle. And it’s occurring whereas 22 U.S. states are both in a recession or on the brink. Trump doesn’t care.
After all, fleecing the American folks isn’t new for him.
Final 12 months, the Home Oversight Committee revealed Trump was charging greater than a thousand bucks an evening on the taxpayers’ bank card in order that Secret Service brokers defending his household may keep at Trump lodges.
After mendacity concerning the outcomes of the 2020 election, he fleeced his own supporters, encouraging donations to assist “Cease the Steal,” donations which he then used to pay his personal authorized payments and Melania’s stylist.
From golden sneakers to Trump Bibles, he’ll get his palms on Americans’ cash any manner he can.
However Trump is caught within the Nineteen Eighties — each by way of his gaudy inside design aesthetic and his assumption of the place the American financial system is. He might study within the midterms that greed isn’t nearly as good because it was for Gordon Gecko when his voters can’t afford gasoline or groceries.
Or possibly he’s caught within the 1780s, his faux-French “Arc de Trump” a fond homage to the courtroom of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, whose lavish spending whereas their folks starved prompted an precise revolution.
Will Americans tire of Trump’s extra as they battle to fulfill fundamental wants whereas he shrugs and says, “Allow them to eat crypto?”
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
