It's Even Worse Than You Think Read online

  To con a wider audience, Trump relies on faux news organizations. People who get their news from these sources believe, reasonably, that he is under siege for doing the right thing.

  Many millions of Americans, including about half of Republicans according to many polls, believe that Trump is their champion and is being railroaded by Democrats who collude with the journalists whom Trump calls the “enemies of the people.” The more extreme among them say that the Democrats want to destroy America by imposing Sharia law. That crazy beliefs have currency in the Trump era provides great fodder for television comedians. The jokes, however accurate in fact and skewering in tone, amuse those who have not bought into Trump, but only strengthen the resolve of those who project onto Trump their hopes and dreams. To those unaware of the factual basis for the humor, it comes across as mean, dishonest, and despicable.

  In this context consider the plight of congressional Republicans, some of whom say in private Trump is unsuited for the presidency, as ignorant as he is unstable. To go against Trump when half of their constituents believe he is a demigod or at least their last best hope for a better future is to risk political suicide. And they know that if they do publicly disagree with Trump they can expect a primary challenge that may well end their careers. Trump knows that to remain in power he must cow the Republicans so they dare not say the word impeachment.

  Many of those who believe in Trump come from the 90 percent whose economic fortunes dwindled over the last half century, turning up only starting in 2013, while the richest of the rich have built fortunes that even John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan Jr. could not have imagined. The vast majority suffer real economic pain, which I documented in a series of books that revealed government policies few knew about that stealthily take money from them and transfer it to the already very rich. Their very real grievances include the fact that policies embraced by both political parties ignored their plight or made it worse. In 2012 the average income that the bottom 90 percent reported on tax returns was slightly less, after inflation, than what the same demographic reported in 1967.

  A major source of Trump’s influence comes from people who distrust respected news organizations and instead rely on those that have been shown to have little regard for fact, especially when it comes to Trump. To discourage the faithful from consulting the work of journalists that Trump cannot dispute, he simply damns them all with the term “fake news” so his supporters will not even bother.

  The biggest influence is Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, its faux daytime newscasts and evening entertainment shows propaganda for Trump. What is reported is often one-sided, inaccurate, or just made up. Until not long before he was fired for sexual harassment, Fox president Roger Ailes talked daily with Trump.

  There is also the fast-growing website Breitbart, which promotes racially charged stories and whose chairman served as Trump’s strategic director in the White House. Trump has told tales that can be found at racist websites like the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer. Trump has at times spread made-up news from Sputnik, a Russian propaganda operation, without citing his source. But troubling as it is that any American leader would spread disinformation from a hostile foreign power, that is not the most disturbing example of how Trump consumes fake news. Trump has cited as reliable, and has appeared as a guest on, an Internet show called InfoWars. There host Alex Jones rants at length about such vital issues of the day as his discovery that “interdimensional beings” secretly control the American elites. Jones says not to worry, that because of his courageous reporting the hidden truth about these creatures is, finally, starting to come out. We will examine the role all this plays in the Trump era.

  What has happened to American democracy has perplexed and stunned people in many countries who looked upon America, flaws and all, as a beacon of hope and a society interested in justice. Even former president George W. Bush has complained about the crudeness of public discourse today. Trump’s victory also gave cause for a party in the Kremlin—and when word of this secret Kremlin victory party got out, the government-controlled television news ran video of one of two senior Russian officials being seized in meetings, bags thrown over their heads, their whereabouts unknown ever since.

  In June 2016 Hillary Clinton, in an address on foreign policy, said, “Moscow and Beijing are deeply envious of our alliances around the world, because they have nothing to match them. They’d love for us to elect a President who would jeopardize that source of strength. If Donald gets his way, they’ll be celebrating in the Kremlin. We cannot let that happen.” The Chinese have seized upon Trump’s erratic behavior and his cancellation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to promote their own trade deal, orienting fifteen Pacific Rim economies and India away from Washington and toward Beijing.

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  There is much more, so let’s get to it.

  Kleptocracy Rising

  As President Donald Trump’s inaugural motorcade left the Capitol for the White House, it passed more military and police guards than civilians. Here and there knots of people gathered behind the barricades, many booing as the presidential limousine, known as The Beast, passed them by.

  On one side of the street protesters waved homemade placards decrying racism, sexism, and corruption; demanding Trump release his tax returns; and making lurid fun of an imagined bromance between the new American president and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. One man held a little effigy of Trump, devil’s horns growing out of its yellow hair. Across the street, the ranks of Trump supporters were thinner and subdued, especially compared to the boisterous enthusiasm eight years earlier when nary a protester turned out for Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

  About five blocks short of the White House, Trump ordered The Beast stopped. A few people chanted “USA! USA!”

  A Secret Service agent opened the door. Trump stepped out, wearing a dark blue overcoat, his signature red tie hanging unfashionably below his belt. From the other side his wife, Melania, emerged in her stunning, form-fitting ice blue dress by Ralph Lauren with matching suede pumps and long cuffed gloves, revealing her highly sophisticated sense of fashion and bottomless budget for clothes. The rest of the family stepped out, too.

  This was not some random point along the route, but one carefully chosen to send a message. The Trumps’ stroll occurred outside the Old Post Office and Clock Tower, which Trump had just converted into the Trump International Hotel Washington.

  On the night before the inauguration, Team Trump dined at the hotel. Sean Spicer, who was about to become White House press secretary, endorsed the hotel. “It’s an absolutely stunning hotel. I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by,” he exclaimed.

  This was an official signal that no boundaries would be drawn between presidential duties and personal profits. The family’s two-minute turn on the Pennsylvania Avenue asphalt outside the president’s newest hotel sent a clear signal to those seeking to curry favor with him and his family that they should first pay tribute. The message radiated quickly, enveloping this acquisitive administration at home and abroad.

  The Al-Sabah family seemingly had already gotten the message. The Al-Sabahs own enough oil-rich real estate in the Middle East that their family does business as a country called Kuwait. Each year the Kuwaiti government hosts a lavish party to mark its national day, an event held in Washington as well to express its thanks to America for Operation Desert Storm. This first Gulf War easily ousted Saddam Hussein’s invading army, recovering much of what they stole, including the gold bathroom sink faucets that American soldiers reinstalled in the emir’s bathroom before he returned to his palace.

  For years, the Kuwaitis hosted their annual soirée at the Four Seasons hotel, one of Washington’s swankiest. But after the 2016 elections the Kuwaitis decided they would get much more value for the money by moving the affair to Trump’s hotel.

  President Trump stopped by the hotel for dinner a few times, reinforcing the message of seamlessness between his official duties a
nd his private business. In official appearances, the president often talked about how terrific his properties are, using the White House and the presidential seal as props to promote his profiteering.

  Trump’s strategy has made the hotel a phenomenal success.

  * * *

  Trump had leased the property from the federal government for sixty years. Reports the Trump Organization filed before the opening projected losses of $2.1 million in the first four months of 2017. Instead it generated a profit of almost $2 million, documents obtained by The Washington Post showed.

  Trump’s hotel charges the highest room rates in Washington even though nothing distinguishes it from other high-end lodging establishments, other than the name over the entrance.

  Average room rates at Trump hotels fell during much of 2016, but right after the election rates soared 20 percent. Similar hotels increased rates by about one percent compared to the prior year. After Trump took office luxury hotel prices in America were flat, except for Trump hotels, where rates soared by as much as 40 percent, The Economist magazine concluded after analyzing published rates.

  Documents filed with the government’s property management arm, the General Services Administration, revealed that at Trump’s Washington hotel the average revenue per guest night was $653. That was triple the average of all District of Columbia hotels and well above what other high-end hotels charged.

  At night, the Trump bar and restaurant hummed. Steaks cost $60. Trump’s cash registers rang up more than $68,000 per day selling food and beverages, a total in the first 120 days of $8.2 million. The tabs were run up by lobbyists, executives, foreign diplomats, and other favor seekers with deep expense accounts who found it the best place to meet Trump cabinet members and other appointees with their own deep pockets.

  The hotel business Trump promoted by stopping The Beast showed how kleptocracies begin in plain sight. But while the keen-eyed swamp dwellers in Washington understood, many people watching the live television broadcast missed the message because the video pool camera in a truck ahead of The Beast stayed focused on the family, not the surrounding buildings. The reason for the stop got little serious discussion.

  Interestingly, the massive granite-walled building that became a Trump hotel connected the president to a crooked nineteenth-century industrial titan turned politician whose avaricious behavior bore striking similarities to Trump’s. The site for the Old Post Office had been chosen by Senator Leland Stanford of California, who became one of the capital’s swamp dwellers after making a fortune cheating American taxpayers. Stanford and his cronies tripled their fee per mile for much of the Central Pacific Railroad track by sending Washington maps showing that the flatlands outside Sacramento were High Sierra mountains. Trump himself had previously faked accounting records, filed at least two fraudulent income tax returns, and made false claims to escape property tax bills.

  When completed in 1899, the Romanesque Revival structure was the first in America’s capital built using steel frame technology. Trump Tower and the Trump Plaza apartments in Manhattan were among the first high-rises there made of concrete, all of it Mafia-supplied cement.

  Stanford used immigrant labor from China for dangerous work with dynamite and other tasks, and many of them died, according to congressional testimony, their wages unpaid. Trump used illegal immigrants with sledgehammers (but no hard hats or other safety gear) to demolish a twelve-story Manhattan department store so he could build Trump Tower. A federal judge, after a trial, held that Trump engaged in a conspiracy to cheat those men out of their full $4 an hour pay.

  Stanford personally completed the transcontinental railroad by driving the Golden Spike into the last rail section in 1869. Trump puts his name on his buildings in faux gold capital letters.

  Stanford started what became one of the world’s great universities, named for his dead son. Trump started a faux university named for himself that taught nothing of value and collapsed in scandal.

  In many ways the new administration, like Trump himself, would prove to be crass. But when it came to enriching himself and his family through his official position, Trump applied subtle techniques, like frequently visiting Mar-a-Lago and his golf courses, where the Secret Service paid full price for everything, including the golf carts to follow the president around his links. Though as a candidate he vowed never to leave the White House and never play golf or visit his golf courses because there was so much work to do, he spent seven of the first nine weekends as president at his properties, setting a pattern that has continued.

  During the transition, Trump doubled the fee to become a Mar-a-Lago member to $200,000, showing the power of the presidency for someone determined to maximize such a profitable opportunity. Candidate Trump castigated Bill and Hillary Clinton for making money because of their positions, calling what they did criminal. They raked in money from speeches, but at least they waited until they were out of office to cash in.

  During the transition, Trump pledged that he would not expand his businesses, would not be opening new hotels and the like. “No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office,” he tweeted.

  Trump had long been known to never let a penny slip past his fingers. He once deposited a check for 13 cents, a fake refund sent him by the satirical magazine Spy to test the avariciousness of the rich and famous. Of the fifty-eight well-heeled Americans to whom Spy sent increasingly smaller checks, only Trump and his pal Adnan Khashoggi, the Middle East arms merchant, cashed theirs.

  Events would soon show that all that had changed was the size of the stakes. Ivanka Trump’s clothing line would get an official endorsement from White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, who later had to apologize. Frequent visits to Trump properties would remind those seeking favors of where to spend their money. And the deal making did not stop; it was just nominally done by Trump’s oldest sons.

  No opportunity to profit from the Trump candidacy was too crass. When son Eric showed up at a Trump-branded golf course in Scotland, the staff were issued “Make Turnberry Great Again” hats, playing off the president’s campaign slogan.

  * * *

  White House promotion of the Trump Washington hotel got to be too much for Diane Gross and her husband, Khalid Pitts. They owned one of the hottest bistros in Washington. It was hopping until Trump became president.

  Cork Wine Bar gets rave reviews, offers more than fifty wines by the glass, and often has diplomats, lobbyists, and officials waiting for tables. But business slowed once Trump took office, the couple said in a lawsuit filed in District of Columbia Superior Court.

  “A significant portion of Cork’s business involves serving meals and alcoholic beverages, and hosting events, often for large groups of individuals and organizations, including many from outside the United States, who have business of one kind or another with—including seeking to influence the policies of—United States Government and its elected officials,” they said in court papers.

  Trump’s hotel would simply have been another competitor had Hillary Clinton won the Electoral College as well as the popular vote. But because Trump became president, Gross and Pitts complained, “many organizations and individuals, including citizens of nations other than the United States, substantially increased the use of” the Trump hotel to the detriment of Cork Wine Bar.

  “The perception of many of the customers and prospective customers of the hotel, substantially aided by the marketing efforts of officers and employees of the hotel,” as well as the president, his family, and his associates, was “that it would be to their advantage in their dealings with President Donald J. Trump and other agencies of the United States Government” to patronize his hotel and not Cork Wine Bar.

  “Rather than take any significant steps to avoid exploiting public office for private gain,” their lawsuit continued, Trump, his family, and White House staff and advisers “continued to promote the hotel to maximize its exposure and income-producing potential.”

  Their complaint cited examples o
f Trump bringing up the hotel in official White House meetings where television cameras were present, reinforcing the impression among favor seekers that doing business there would be smart.

  One lobbyist, evidently a frequent but unnamed Cork Wine Bar customer, was quoted in the lawsuit. “Reading between the lines isn’t that tough here,” he told Gross and Pitts. “The senior [White House] staff hang out in the lobby bar at the hotel. They are seeing who spends time and money there and who books large parties there and large blocks of rooms for delegations.

  “Point is,” the lobbyist was quoted as saying, “someone is paying attention to the person who orders the $1,000 bottle of wine.”

  The couple also complained that Trump was in violation of the sixty-year lease of the Old Post Office, which was owned by the federal government. Section 37.19 of the lease “specifically forbids” any federal employee from receiving any gain or benefit from the lease.

  “No member or delegate to Congress, or elected official of the government of the United States,” the lease states, “shall be admitted to any share or part of this lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”

  There was an exception for shareholders in publicly traded corporations. Trump owns his businesses, making that clause irrelevant.

  Trump signed many Old Post Office documents without reading them, he acknowledged in a separate lawsuit. And while he put his more than five hundred business entities into a supposedly blind trust, that trust consists largely of Trump-named businesses managed by his two oldest sons. Previous presidents owned stocks and bonds, which were put into blind trusts, sometimes with orders to sell and buy mutual funds instead. But Trump’s properties were not shielded the same way.