President Midas' Terrible Touch

New York Times

6 days ago

When I was little, my mom told me a Cinderella story that happened to be true.
Once upon a time, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson held a competition for the design of the house of our presidents. Well-established architects submitted proposals, but the winner was a young Irishman, James Hoban. He also supervised construction of part of the Capitol.
My dad, another Irishman, worked at the Capitol. And sometimes my mom and I would drive down and gaze at the White House and Capitol, so proud that an up-and coming Irishman could have beaten out all the other architects to play such a central role in conjuring the seats of our new Republic.
I would think about that when I grew up to be a White House reporter, interviewing President George H.W. Bush in the Oval Office. The room where it happens was a place of wonder, baked in history — good and bad. A famous old ivy, which had lasted through so many administrations and eavesdropped on so many remarkable conversations, was the main item on the mantel, flanked by porcelain vases. (Now there are nine gold decorative objects and counting.)
Back then, the room was understated and overwhelming. As Michael Douglas's chief executive said in 'The American President,' showing off the Oval Office, 'The White House is the single greatest home court advantage in the modern world.'
Real power doesn't need to shout. In fact, it can whisper.
But Donald Trump was shouting down to reporters on Tuesday as he surveyed his desecration from the White House roof. He looked at his Brutalist Rose Garden renovation, a stone slab with Florida-esque patio furniture and the site of the proposed $200 million ballroom, encroaching on the East Wing and encompassing 90,000 square feet, nearly twice the size of the White House residence.
Trump vowed to pay for the ballroom with private funds, which means, of course, that someone else will curry favor and pay.
(Trump bulldozed the Rose Garden, which Melania helped renovate, just so reporters covering his outdoor pronouncements and White House staffers would not sink into the grass.)
Trump has long been a human wrecking ball, but now his chaos has splattered onto the usually serene White House. He's obsessively terraforming the place to be an extension of his attention-crazed id.
Ever since he escaped what he considered a drab existence in Queens, Trump has bedazzled his life — everything from tweezers to seatbelts to TV remotes were gilt. Even as president, he's selling gold sneakers, gold watches and gold phones.
Now he has tarted up the Oval; it's the modern version of worshiping the golden calf and just as profane.
Trump's tacky rococo gold adornments are growing exponentially. He's piling on more and more garish features — from cherubs to mantelpiece swirls — and sycophants add to the gold rush by bringing offerings to truckle to King Midas.
A groveling Tim Cook came to the Oval on Wednesday with a gift for the president: a glass plaque with a 24-karat gold base.
Trump is trying to turn the people's house into a Saudi palace — 'dictator chic.' It is symbolic of this president: He's refashioning our democracy as an autocracy.
'In one year, we'll celebrate 250 years of independence from a mad king,' David Axelrod told me. 'Would you not give anything to invite Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln back to comment on what they're seeing? It's blasphemous.'
Trump is making the Justice Department a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc., turning the F.B.I. into his personal, political police force, pursuing his foes with a Javert-like fever. Justice is investigating Letitia James and Adam Schiff, and another agency is investigating Jack Smith. After Democratic legislators left Texas to block Trump's gerrymandering power grab there, and after Trump said the F.B.I. 'may have to' get involved, a Republican senator from Texas said the bureau agreed to help locate the lawmakers. Trump sent his former lawyer, now deputy attorney general, to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, who was then summarily transferred to Club Fed amid whispers of a possible pardon. Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as acting head of the F.B.I., was dismissed because he tried to protect agents from Trump's purge of anyone involved in investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. This, even as Jared Wise, a rioter who egged on the mob that day to 'kill' the police, has been named an adviser to the Justice Department task force seeking vengeance against Trump's perceived political foes. Trump slapped Brazil with a 50 percent tariff because the government is prosecuting his far-right buddy Jair Bolsonaro, known as 'the Trump of the tropics,' for trying to overturn the election he lost.
The president's unbridled gilt reflects his unbridled greed.
King Midas of legend paid for his vanity. He was horrified that he could not control the golden touch. He turned his daughter, his food and his drink into gold. Aristotle said his 'vain prayer' led to starvation.
It is a lesson Trump will never learn: The flashiest is never the truest.
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