The United States of Trump
Page 24
“[Income] inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient actually increased more during the Obama years than during the Bush administration.”
Mr. Regalia’s analysis was written with two years remaining in President Obama’s second term. Things did not get much better.
That’s one of the main reasons that almost 63 million Americans voted for a billionaire populist for president. Donald Trump promised economic prosperity. Many folks believed the promise.
That belief bore out.
* * *
DESPITE TEMPERATURES IN the seventies, Christmas at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Florida’s Atlantic coast is as festive and traditional as most places in America.
The main building is tastefully decorated, and the palms are decked with boughs of holly. Secret Service agents ring the property, and every time the president leaves the premises, traffic is diverted.
That definitely cuts into the “goodwill toward men” deal for the affluent people celebrating the birth of Jesus in Palm Beach.
It is hard to imagine Donald Trump singing Christmas carols or doing last-minute shopping. He does occasionally greet club guests and often dines in the public areas with friends. In the morning, upstairs in the lavish mansion, the president takes calls from around the world, and consults with his advisers on a secure phone.
The truth is that President Trump is always working, even when he’s on one of the many golf courses he owns. There is always something occupying him. That’s why he enjoys being president: there is always action, challenges, the specter of a new deal.
In his real estate empire, Trump usually had to seek the action. Now, running the most powerful country on earth, he finds that the drama comes to him.
As he ticks off the Christmas vacation days in Florida, Donald Trump knows very well that the upcoming year, 2018, will likely make or break him.
There will be plenty of action and confrontation.
Happy New Year, indeed.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
THE WHITE HOUSE
JANUARY 4, 2018
AFTERNOON
This will not be a good year for President Donald Trump. Although he is still feeling strong from his big tax-cut win in December, things will soon begin to spiral downward. Today, the president will ask Congress for $18 billion to build 316 miles of new border fence and reinforce 400 other miles of barrier.
He will not get the money.
About a week from now, an adult-film actress named Stormy Daniels will say she received $130,000 to keep quiet about a long-ago tryst with Donald Trump. The woman will be in the news for months.
Also this year, President Trump will ask Kim Jung-un to drop his nuclear weapons program. Mr. Trump will travel all the way to Singapore to meet with the North Korean martinet. The president will not seal the deal with Kim.
After that, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, will betray him and eventually plead guilty to eight felonies. The story will generate news coverage that borders on hysteria.
Mr. Trump’s television protégée Omarosa will also betray him in pursuit of book sales.
The president’s handpicked attorney general, Jeff Sessions, will infuriate him over the Russian investigation and will resign under pressure in the fall.
Another woman, Karen MacDougal, will embarrass the president with affair allegations, and the National Enquirer will admit to being involved in hush money payments. More hysteria.
Illegal alien crossings at the southern border will surge as vicious people smugglers figure out how to scam U.S. asylum provisions. President Trump will send troops to the border.
Mr. Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, will be accused of sexual misconduct in his youth, leading to a bitter round of Senate hearings where the constitutional right of “due process” is battered. Although the FBI could find no evidence of any wrongdoing by Kavanaugh, he is barely confirmed by the Senate. He and his family absorb enormous punishment in full view of the country—his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, is also heavily criticized by conservatives.
But the lowest point in 2018 for the beleaguered president will come in the midterm election, when Republicans will lose their majority in the House of Representatives. This will allow Nancy Pelosi, who loathes Donald Trump, to once again assume the powerful position of House Speaker.
At this point in history, Mrs. Pelosi is heavily invested not only in defeating Donald Trump for reelection in 2020, but also in personally destroying him. Thus, President Trump will get almost no cooperation from the House, and most meaningful legislation will stall. That will frustrate many American voters, which is part of Nancy Pelosi’s plan. The other strategic aspect embraced by the Speaker is to create as much chaos for the White House as possible. With Special Counsel Mueller’s Russian-collusion investigation inviting daily anti-Trump speculation from the media, Mrs. Pelosi’s desire to cripple Donald Trump’s presidency will quickly gather significant momentum.
* * *
FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP, this year will be one of bitter confrontation. He will continue to denounce the Mueller investigation as a “witch-hunt” and “fake news,” and publicly condemn the entire process.
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (Democrat of California) shows off the gavel after accepting it from United States House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Republican of California) as the 116th Congress convenes for its opening session in the House Chamber of the Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 3, 2019.
Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Trump will maintain some semblance of discipline. Although he is bitter about his election and governance being tainted by allegations that he deems false, he apparently does not use his power to directly inhibit Robert Mueller’s investigators from fact gathering. That will save Donald Trump from a Nixonesque scandal.
Talking with acquaintances, including your correspondent, the president vents hard about the unfairness of the Russian situation. He is incensed that the press is torturing him with allegations, using unproven scenarios to try to weaken and humiliate him.
Mr. Trump truly believes the American media are “the enemy of the people.” But he continues to speak with his primary tormentors, believing he might be able to persuade them to treat him more fairly. That seems at odds with his almost daily attacks on the media. In fact, on May 9, President Trump will tweet:
“The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?”
As we will see, President Trump will not banish the media, most of which rivals Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton in terms of disdaining all things Trump. In fact, if you had to generalize about how most press people assess Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton’s public words sum it up:
“I think the president and his administration pose a clear and present danger to our democracy. I hoped, back on the day after the election, that I wouldn’t be sitting here, all these months later, feeling compelled to say that with a sense of urgency.
“[Donald Trump] is immature, with poor impulse control; unqualified for the position that he holds; reactive, not proactive; not strategic, either at home or on the world stage.”
To be fair, that view can be factually challenged. As the year 2018 draws to a close, the American economy is doing better than at any time during the Obama administration. ISIS, which had exercised horrifying power while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, is almost defeated. And minorities in America are far better off in the job market than they were under Presidents Clinton and Obama.1
Surely, the American economy’s dramatic rise was not “reactive,” but the result of new benefits targeted to the corporate world, which then expanded investment and hiring.
Few press vehicles will point those things out, and Hillary Clinton certainly will not.
<
br /> But is all the “negativity,” to use Donald Trump’s own words, affecting the president’s psyche? No, according to his son:
O’REILLY: [Your father] seems to be fed up … The media is ingrained in America.
TRUMP JR.: Yeah, but they don’t represent America. They represent their small bubble interest. People are influenced by them … but I think his resolve is strengthened to combat that even more.
O’REILLY: Have you seen a personality change?
TRUMP JR.: No, not even a little bit.
* * *
THERE WILL BE no Christmas in Palm Beach this year because the government has been partially shut down over border wall money. So, the president and his family celebrate the federal holiday in the White House.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump greet members of the U.S. military during an unannounced trip to Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on December 26, 2018, the president’s first visit to U.S. troops deployed in a war zone since his election two years prior.
Then, President and Mrs. Trump make a surprise visit to Iraq to extend Christmas greetings to American troops stationed in that difficult country.
So, as 2019 approaches, Donald Trump has many things weighing on him. The Mueller Report will soon be released, and there is uncertainty for the president there.
Some Democrats are preparing to announce they will run against him in 2020, and the press is as angry with a president as it’s ever been. Richard Nixon was mercilessly hammered during Watergate, but he didn’t have to deal with a twenty-four-hour news cycle that doesn’t even stop on Christmas.
’Tis the season to be jolly.
A cynic might say, “Yeah, sure.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
THE WHITE HOUSE
JANUARY 20, 2019
AFTERNOON
The third year of the Trump presidency begins with day thirty of the partial government shutdown. Five days from now, on Friday, the shutdown will end when President Trump okays a deal that will fund the government for three weeks so a compromise can be sought over federal funding for a part of Mr. Trump’s proposed wall on the southern border.
Predictably, no compromise will be reached as congressional Democrats remain steadfast against a new barrier. President Trump will then declare a national emergency on the border and seek money for the wall elsewhere in the federal budget.
The border controversy and shutdown illustrate perfectly the deep divide between Donald Trump and his opposition, including the national media.
In ordinary times, Congress would likely have been able to forge a compromise on the illegal immigration issue. But of course, these are not ordinary times. Policy has become personal; disagreement has turned into hatred.
A vivid example of this will occur twelve days from now, when the publisher of the New York Times, A. G. Sulzberger, and two of his White House reporters meet with President Trump in the Oval Office.
The Times opinion pages have brutalized Donald Trump from the beginning of his political adventure, and its hard-news operation often uses anonymous sources to put the president in a negative place.
Very few positive Trump stories appear in the New York Times.
In response, the president has labeled the Times “fake news” and has harshly criticized the newspaper. This has apparently upset Mr. Sulzberger, who believes Mr. Trump’s negative words are putting journalists in danger.
At the Oval Office meeting, Sulzberger will say this: “Tough coverage is part of occupying the most powerful seat on earth … [S]peaking for the Times, you know my enduring commitment [is that] we will treat you fairly and accurately.”
The president answers that he appreciates the publisher’s words but then unloads.
“I have great respect for the press—but when I won the election and I know, and I’m not going to say that you apologized [to your readers,] but they did a whole big thing … and there were those who say that it was an apology. I was treated really badly during the election. That’s the good news. The bad news is I’m treated even worse [now]. I’m treated bad.”
Most Trump supporters would agree with the president’s assessment of the New York Times, but its publisher, whose family owns the paper, does not.
And as old Rudyard Kipling once opined, “Never the twain shall meet.”
* * *
ON APRIL 18, 2019, the Mueller Report on the investigation into the Trump Organization’s allegedly working with Russia to undermine Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign was released. After almost two years and $30 million spent, the investigation concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. In addition, allegations of obstruction of justice remain dubious. After reading Mueller’s report, Attorney General William Barr declared in a letter to Congress that “to obtain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person, acting with corrupt intent, engaged in obstructive conduct with … In cataloguing the President’s actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions, that in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct.”
* * *
THE DAY AFTER the Mueller Report was released, the New York Times issued a scathing editorial against President Trump: “The real danger the Mueller Report reveals is not of a president who knowingly or unknowingly let a hostile power do dirty tricks on his behalf, but of a president who refuses to see that he has been used to damage democracy and national security.”
A skeptic of the Times might point out that writing that President Trump might have “knowingly” let Russia work on his behalf directly contradicts the conclusion of the Special Counsel.
As a newspaper publisher once promised with an “enduring commitment,” fairness and accuracy are vital.
* * *
THE MUELLER REPORT did not change many minds in the anti-Trump community and led to some very bizarre displays on both sides. One of them by the Trump reelection campaign, which began selling shirts and drinking mugs emblazoned with “Collusion Delusion.”
The president trumpeted total exoneration, but this was like kicking a beehive. Democrats attacked on all fronts, using House committees and media surrogates to cast doubt on the Mueller findings and to trash perceived Trump supporters like Attorney General William Barr.
In fact, anyone associated with the president was hammered.
For example, economist Stephen Moore was nominated by Mr. Trump as a candidate for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Usually, that’s a fairly easy appointment.
Not this time. Mr. Moore was viciously attacked in personal ways and finally withdrew his name. The Wall Street Journal editorialized this way:
Mr. Moore’s real sin was helping to fashion the tax reform that Mr. Trump adopted as a candidate and that passed in modified form in 2017. The economic left might forgive Mr. Moore for being wrong. But it will never forgive him for being right that deregulation and lower rates would help the economy rise above the Obama years of malaise to a higher plane of 3 percent growth and the best market for workers in 20 years.
Mr. Moore’s critics at the New York Times and the Washington Post predicted a stock market crash and recession if Mr. Trump was elected and his plan implemented. Mr. Moore made the mistake of making them look bad.
* * *
AND SO IT is that the political and social civil war in America rages on, with one Donald J. Trump right in the middle of nearly every battle.
Various House committees, controlled by Democrats, attempt to deprecate the Mueller Report and cast the investigation as a condemnation of President Trump.
Yogi Berra was wrong when he said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
This one will never be over.
* * *
STILL, THE PRESIDENT seems to sometimes relish the fight that will only end when he leaves office. And even after that, the Trump legacy will resound throughout the United States of America.
We will never see the likes o
f him again.
And that will greatly please those Americans who believe Donald Trump has harmed the nation. But most of all Trump’s departure will be greeted with rapture by his media opponents, who are doing everything possible to see that he loses in 2020.
On April 26, 2019, the Los Angeles Times said this:
There can be no doubt that four more years of a Trump presidency would be a disaster for the country. He has proved himself an incompetent and ignorant chief executive.…
Rather than appeal to what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature,” Trump has savaged the press and his political opponents, demonized immigrants and provided rhetorical aid and comfort to brutal police officers and white nationalists.
So, yes, an important question for voters in next year’s Democratic primaries must be: Can this candidate defeat Trump?
A few days later, while the better angels were contemplating that assessment of the president, the U.S. government announced the lowest unemployment rate in fifty years.
The celebration was not universal.
NOTES
Chapter 4
1. It was estimated that more than thirty thousand Ku Klux Klan members lived in the New York City area at the time.
Chapter 5
1. That part of Levittown eventually shifted to a Westbury post office address.
Chapter 14
1. That amount is equivalent to $30 million today. The Trump siblings would enjoy another windfall in 2004 when they sold Fred’s real estate holdings for $177 million—$236 million today.