$1000 a ticket
While federal workers go unpaid and soybean farmers wonder who will buy their crop now, we are paying for the tents at Trump’s party at Mar-a-Lago.
While the president has vowed to remain in Washington as the government shutdown continues, his swanky party at the Florida resort will go on regardless. And, as Quartz reported, it will be funded in large part by American taxpayers. The news outlet found expenses for the party on government spending records, showing that a little more than $54,000 went to a tent rental company from Delray Beach, Florida, which confirmed that it was for Trump’s New Year’s Eve party. The purchase was officially made by the U.S. Secret Service, which is in charge of security arrangements when Trump travels to his resort.
Donald Trump’s exclusive New Year’s Eve party came under fire last year, especially after taxpayers picked up a bill of more than $26,000 for renting lights, generators, tables, and tents at the soiree. Trump has also cashed in big since becoming president, the Press Herald reported. Ticket prices for the party jumped by 25 percent, reaching $1,000 for those who are not members of Mar-a-Lago. Members will still have to pay $650 to attend, which is on top of the club’s $200,000 initiation fee, which doubled the year Trump became president.
Interesting. He’s raking in the bucks for the party, while we help pay the party’s expenses. Nice little grift he’s got there.
“This type of naked profiteering off of a government office is what I would expect from King Louis XVI or his modern kleptocratic equivalents, not an American president,” said Norm Eisen, former White House ethics lawyer under Barack Obama.
Whether or not Trump ultimately decides to party on New Year’s Eve at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort, taxpayers have already paid $54,000 for tents for the bash. That’s as hundreds of thousands of federal workers are out of work thanks to the #TrumpShutdown. https://t.co/bfOABYh2C8
— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) December 29, 2018
At least we know why we can’t afford to give federal employees their cost of living raise.
And it’s no wonder that our collective smacks are permanently gobbed.
I may be wrong, but I cannot for the life of me recall Trump ever foreshadowing in his election campaign that these sumptuous bacchanals would be on for young and old and at taxpayer expense once he was elected. It must have slipped his mind. After all, as a genius (self declared and proclaimed) his attention is clearly drawn all the time to other far more important and profound matters.
But what might they have been? The whole world must be asking.
Omar,
No, but he did make sure to brag about how he would be declining/donating the presidential salary (of around $200k a year I think) if elected. Oooh, so generous! What a benefit to the taxpayers!
I usually brush off the stories about Secret Service expenses. They are what they are. If Mitt Romney had been elected and his quadrillion grandchildren got protection, well, so be it. If America chose* to elect a preening douchebag like Trump whose children are constantly prancing off to Dubai or wherever and forcing the Secret Service to incur huge expenses to accompany them, well, that’s what the American voters in their infinite wisdom (cough, cough) chose.*
But personally profiting off of this shit? If Obama had been “renting” space to the Secret Service, you know he would have been roasted for it even if he did it at cost.
*Insert your complaints about the Electoral College, Russian interference, etc. here. You know what I’m getting at.
Screechy Monkey, #4
There has to be a benefit for Trump in that act of financial piety. Assuming the president’s income is taxable, and given that Trump is somewhat tax-averse, by not taking the salary, thereby not involving the IRS in his personal finances, could he be drawing attention away from the millions in tax dollars he’s already evaded? Or does (did) the salary get paid into a charitable foundation….say…..the Trump Foundation, for example? Purely as an altruistic act, of course.
Acolyte:
Right on the money, I’d say. Literally.
And it is not the only presidential example. As I recall, Richard Nixon qualified for some significant tax concession by making that presidential archive and running record of all conversations in the Oval Office now known as the Watergate Tapes; which tapes became very serious evidence against him, and led straight to his sacking.
Yes indeed*. It is impossible for non-USAians to read or watch the news without wondering how on Earth he is getting away with absolutely everything. Is it that people think that, having elected a reality-TV ‘star’, they are watching a reality-TV programme and that none of his criminal activities will actually affect them in any way? Do they find it amusing that he is stealing from them; surrendering to enemies of the state under instructions from another enemy of the state; destroying trade, government agencies and the environment; and making the whole country a laughing-stock world-wide, even where he is terrifying us?
I’m envisioning people sitting on their sofas in front of the telly, merrily awaiting the next ‘episode’ to see what new outrage he has committed, popcorn in hand, even as the bailiffs remove everything around them.
*For the non-English reader of this blog, please be aware that Seth was using reversal of noun and verb as an amusing ploy. It is, of course, our collective gobs which are permanently smacked. ‘Gobs’ being mouths, and ‘smacked’ being the action of slapping our hands against our lips to avoid displaying our open mouths.
tiggerthewing, #7
I read a few years ago that a remarkable number of Americans who had been polled named the West Wing character, President Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, as the US president (suggesting that they thought the show was a documentary series) , whilst others knew it was a fictional programme but thought that Sheen did such a good job in the show he’d make a good president himself. Knowing that, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some genuinely believe the Trumps are just a Kardashian-esque family, albeit a less talented mob than the K’s, in just another scripted reality show played for ratings.
tiggerthewing, AoS, as an American (sigh), my experience here in the Midwest is that the people who vote for Trump (and those who didn’t) pretty much regard the president almost as a king in terms of power (he isn’t; the Constitution left him weak, but 20th century presidents grabbed tons of power and Congress let them do it). The Trump voters actually think that stuff is good, and will make America Great Again, by which they mean 1950s for women and children, and 1880s for business [women baking cookies all day and vacuuming in pearls; children being whacked in school when they act up (not their children, because their children are brought up ‘right’); children being required to pray, salute the flag, and have devotionals in school; and business not being fettered by unions, environmental regulations, or minimum wage].
They actually believe that making the world better for everyone actually made it worse for them, mostly because they believe in their own superiority and are sure that in a world freed from ‘liberal tinkering’ they would be on the top of the heap, rich and powerful, and respected both at work and at home. They are not aware that they are where they are because of unions, college grants/loans that allowed them to get their education, and women who did all the damn work so they could succeed. They do not realize that their most likely location in the hierarchy would be working long ass days without a guaranteed lunch or weekend, being paid in scrip they can only use at the country store, and dying young in an industrial accident. That’s because, in this part of the country at least, the educational system has been afraid to tell people anything other than the rah rah creation story of the country where simple farmers went out and won the war without any help (I had no idea the French helped us until college, where history was taught somewhat more accurately). They have been taught that they are the chosen, filled with manifest destiny, and that Western men (and only men) have built things, created things, discovered things, killed things, and established things.
In their world, history was simple and clean until FDR messed it up with the New Deal, and liberals took over and started running everything. Even when Reagan was in power, even when Bush was in power, even with Trump in power, even when conservatives have all three branches of government, they still believe liberals, Jews, women, and gays hold all the power and control all the governmental functions, money, and everything else. No matter that none of those groups have ever held power in this country, and that every small step we’ve taken we’ve had to fight, sweat, and die for, they believe that we have swept through the nation, carpet bombing conservative communities, taking sledgehammers to churches, and castrating males, while demanding worship and veneration (not all literally, of course, because they can see that the churches are still standing and that their balls are intact, but in a real way nevertheless).
So when Trump comes along, they embrace him because he believes those things, too, and is willing to say out loud what these guys have been saying (most of them out loud, in spite of what you hear in the media) for years. I know they’ve been saying it out loud, because I live right here in the heartland, where I can hear it even with my hands over my ears. It’s the same dynamic I saw here one summer when the farmers moaned that there had been so much rain they couldn’t get the irrigators in the fields. They can see the truth, it’s obvious, but they can’t see it because it doesn’t fit the picture of reality they have built.
One woman on the City Council translated to women running everything, though we’ve never had a woman mayor (and the woman who ran for mayor in 2016 was roundly defeated). One gay pride parade on the main street of town (which is not, of course, Main Street) and the gays have taken over everything. One Muslim working at our school teaching economics, and the Muslims are plotting to destroy the white man. Anywhere they see someone in power who does not look like them, and it’s Armageddon for middle-class white males. It’s like someone put paranoia juice in the water supply, or something.
Sorry about the rant. I’ve been a bit out of sorts lately, and I’m tired of living in red America. I’m ready for a change, but I’m too young to retire and too old to find another job. Stuck.
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AoS,
WELL, ACTUALLY, President Bartlett was fairly mediocre. Most of his domestic achievements were either small-ball measures or dubious achievements (if you buy the claims of certain insiders that the Gaines-Turner deal to “save” Social Security was really brokered by the White House). Sure, the booming economy of the second half of his first term may have persuaded the voters to “forgive” his lying about his multiple sclerosis (well, that and the GOP’s choice of an empty suit as its nominee), but it’s unclear how much credit Bartlett really deserves for that. He couldn’t carry Congress, and it’s not clear that it would have made much difference if he had because he had so little pull over his own party that he meekly agreed to elevate a mediocrity like “Bingo” Bob Russell as his replacement vice president. His chief legislative aide, boy wonder Joshua Lyman, actually cost the Democrats that rarest of things, a Democratic senator from Utah, who crossed the floor after Lyman’s bullying tactics backfired.
When handed the chance to remake the Supreme Court for decades, Bartlett fumbled and nominated the most conservative justice in decades as part of a “compromise” to get his preferred choice of Chief Justice, apparently unaware that the chief only gets one vote no matter how liberal she is or how nice her shoes are. But hey, I’m sure that all those inspiring solo dissents by Chief Justice Lang really make up for all the 5-4 decisions that would have gone the other way if Bartlett had put any liberal with a pulse on the bench instead of the “brilliant conservative” Justice Mulready.
His administration may have managed to keep his MS a secret for a while, but otherwise leaked like a sieve, resulting in the resignation of Vice President Hoynes and the criminal conviction of Director of Communications Toby Ziegler for intentionally leaking classified information for selfish personal reasons. C.J. Cregg was a notorious leaker as press secretary and played favorites with the press, even dating a White House reporter, and was rewarded with a promotion to Chief of Staff.
As to foreign policy…. [goes on for another ten paragraphs]
*applause*
Thanks — I’m actually a big West Wing fan (I’d have to be to pull all those details), and doing a rewatch in recent years to keep up with the West Wing Weekly podcast. It was a great show, especially for a major network, and some of the criticisms it gets are a bum rap in my opinion — it was actually fairly rare for a problem to be disposed of by a Big Sorkin Speech that changed opponents’ minds. And of course my list above is a little bit one-sided and cherrypicked.
But it’s true that, whether because it was still heavily influenced by the Clinton-era “third way/triangulation” politics, or a need to keep the West Wing universe similar to our own, or just the story they wanted to tell, Bartlet really didn’t have a lot of big policy wins, at least up until around Season 6 when the show kind of goes off the rails. You can make a case for him being a very good president in the sense that he was a good, decent, intelligent, and compassionate person — and we’re seeing how important those qualities are when they’re missing.