It’s been exhausting watching the turmoil and consternation in this country and worldwide as President Donald Trump, as promised, shakes things up.
We’ve seen continued ethics concerns big and small, a doubling down on imaginary voter fraud, good news on the torture front, ideas for a border tax that would shoot Americans in the foot, and the White House at times seemingly possessed by the alt-right, discovering the media’s job is to be a watchdog, not a lapdog, of government.
Mar-a-Lago, the Trump family’s private club in Florida, has doubled its membership fees since the inauguration from $100,000 to $200,000, seeming to cash in on President Trump’s plans to make the club his “winter White House.”
Bernd Lembcke, the managing director of the 118-room club in Palm Beach, confirmed that applications have surged since Trump won the election in November.
Asked if having Trump in the White House has meant greater interest in outsiders joining the club — including people who might want access to Trump — Lembcke said, “It enhances it.”
Robert Weissman, the president of the government ethics watchdog group Public Citizen, said the decision at the minimum, “creates the appearance of cashing in on the presidency and selling direct personal access to the president.”
Who cares what bad ethics optics it presents for the new president who rode to Washington promising to drain the swamp of special interests and special favors?
Is there waste and fraud in government? Most likely, but not the systemic voter fraud claimed by Trump, whose ego imagines millions voted illegally against him in the November election. No one outside the White House believes this fantasy, but Trump desperately wants to believe that he didn’t lose the popular vote by nearly 3 million, and was doubling down this past week, calling for a “major” federal probe to prove his unsubstantiated belief. Taxpayers could potentially lose tens of millions of dollars to examine a problem that’s been proven not to exist.
“We are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump,” the National Association of Secretaries of State said in a statement.
This insistence on attacking realities that conflict with the president’s self image continues to create a world of “alternative facts.” The White House should worry more about Russian interference in our elections, which the nation’s top security and intelligence agencies say is a real concern, has actually happened, and should be vigorously investigated.
On the good news front … At least we can count on Defense Secretary James Mattis to keep Trump in check when it comes to torturing people.
Trump said Friday that his defense secretary’s opposition to torture would override his own belief that torture does work.
Since taking office, Trump has signaled a renewed embrace of torture in the fight against Islamic extremism. But most recently he said he will defer to his defense secretary, a retired general who told Congress that torture doesn’t work.
Determined to fulfill his signature campaign promise to wall off America’s southern border, Trump triggered a fresh fight with our southern trading partner over the idea of slapping a 20 percent tax on Mexico’s exports to the U.S. to pay for the wall.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto abruptly scrapped a planned trip to Washington. In the interest of building his wall – which is a simple-minded substitute for comprehensive immigration reform – Trump has turned on an important partner with whom we conduct some $1.6 billion a day in cross-border trade, and cooperate on everything from migration to anti-drug enforcement to major environmental issues.
The tax announcement sparked immediate confusion across Washington, and the White House tried to backtrack, saying the tax was one idea in “a buffet of options.”
Economists point out that tariffs ultimately are paid by American consumers through higher prices. A trade war would hurt both middle America and the Mexican economy, potentially driving more desperate Mexicans across the border in search of work, reversing recent trends, and causing the very problem the wall is intended to fix.
Chief White House political strategist Stephen K. Bannon was wrong, yet correct, about the national media this past week, complaining they were wrong to be scrutinizing the president.
The nation’s founding fathers intended the press to be part of the system of checks and balances that keeps government honest and on the side of the people. That’s why a free press was built into the First Amendment of the Constitution. We are not supposed to be empty-headed conduits for information and assertion or “alternative facts” from any White House, governor’s office or legislature.
Just days after President Trump spoke of a “running war’’ with the media, Bannon — who ran the Breitbart website of one-sided commentary from the extreme right – argued that news organizations were “the opposition party” of the current administration.
“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Bannon said in an interview. “The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and no hard work.”
That may be true at Breitbart but not at the real news organizations that are trying to hold this administration accountable for its actions.
Meanwhile, the president has elevated Bannon, a political adviser who served in the Navy but has no intelligence or security experience, to sit on the National Security Council, while reducing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence to lesser roles.
It just gets scarier.
During the first 100 days of Trump’s administration, we will weigh in each week with nuggets of opinion on some of the highlights (or lowlights) of the week. We’d love to hear what you have to say, too. Email us at letters@recorder.com and we’ll share your views in print and online. Short letters are best; that way, we can get more of them in.