Schmoozing the super-rich to fund a $300m ballroom while cutting food aid for those on low incomes threw the president’s architectural folly into sharp relief
It was a feast fit for a king – and any billionaire willing to be his subject. From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream.
On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m. That the federal government had shut down two weeks earlier scarcely seemed to matter.
But two weeks later, the shutdown is starting to bite – and throw Trump’s architectural folly into sharp relief. On Saturday, with Congress still locked in a legislative stalemate, a potential benefit freeze could leave tens of millions of low-income Americans without food aid. Democrats accuse Trump’s Republican party of “weaponising hunger” to pursue an extreme rightwing agenda.
It’s his boyhood fantasy to pretend to be a king. It’s too bad no one told him that coward kings like him never ended well.
His sons absolutely seem the type to hire assassins on each other over succession. Fortunately he doesn’t seem to care that much about any of them
Does anyone have a link to the complete guest list of this recent schmooze a palooza?
The American people are allowing themselves to be embarrassed daily by this man. This can all end as soon as the American people decide to end it.
Meaning, what? The GOP controls Congress, the courts and the WH.
Hi, American here. I decided to end it. It doesn’t seem to be ending. Now what?
Please enlighten me to this silver bullet action item that I can take to end this. I’m showing up to protests, I’m calling my representatives. It’s not working.
The bullets don’t have to be silver. The GOP aren’t werewolves.
What have you done?
Its called revolt. By the point Americans have reached, many countries would be in full revolt. By the time Americans realize that revolt is their only option the army will be setup in their cities and bought and paid for by the oligarchy. The good soldiers will be removed from the army and they will have no protectors to stand with them.
Ah yes the classic 'why don’t you just go die in a war" argument.
And as always the one suggesting it either doesn’t live in the country or they have some reason they can’t start it themselves. It’s always easier to tell others to go die
Were telling you that because if you don’t do it, we will be the ones dying in ww3 bailing your asses out
No one is coming to bail us out of fascism. The only country with enough military power to oppose us on our own soil is China, and that is diametrically opposed to their historical stance on foreign policy.
You’ll do well to shore up your own Democracies against the tide of foreign-backed propaganda and billionaire oligarchs.
Even then I’m pretty sure China would probably stall out at the West Coast at best. Fact of the matter is most of their shit is purely on paper, they haven’t fought in a war since like Vietnam so they have effectively no institutions when it comes to hands on shit.
If ww3 happens to the tune of the US collapsing, there’s good odds it ends in a nuclear wasteland. There are too many religious nut jobs in power that probably believe nuking new York City means Jesus will come back or something.
Revolt looks different these days… we’ve had one example… other examples could look like that or different. What they will all have in common is that the grossly unequal will begin to fear that their lifestyle is not so sustainable or tolerable as everyone else suffers.
Many countries are smaller than most of our states. Many countries’ governments are not as well physically insulted from their populace. There are multiple bunkers with secret locations for them to hide in. We also have the small problem of the fascists actually having a fairly large following still. They are about to get hungry at the time of year they are accustomed to enjoying a little excess while the man they worship is wallowing in opulence. Maybe it will anger them enough to work with the rest of us, but I don’t know, because their king appeals to their hatefulness, pettiness and greediness.
We have no leaders. Plenty of us are ready to fight. Armed, practiced and willing, but brother I am not a tactician and I certainly don’t have the charisma to rally up the resistance. We are also nearly all less than a paycheck away from joining the people about to lose their welfare in destitution. Mighty hard to start the revolution when work starts at 6:30 and you gotta provide for your family. So for now we wait.
Ah well. That solves it then
The only bottom-up revolts ever in history have been when the masses were literally starving. Anything else was elite driven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_of_elites?wprov=sfti1
ThEy JuSt LeT hIm GeT aWaY wItH iT.
I’m so tired of this short-sighted take.
You are actively letting them get away with it.
Ignorant comment. Fuck America, but not from your perspective. It is deplorable, but the people have been cultivated to be ignorant and malleable. It’s deeply flawed, but it’s system is rigged to beat everyone down and break their collective will.
Those of us who stand up are divided constantly. We’re undermined at every turn. We are marginalized for speaking the truth. Our spirits are broken by the weight of ineffectiveness sold to us as Democracy.
American Exceptionalism is taught from birth and is fully unfounded. There was a time decades ago when the national anthem would give me goosebumps, but now I know that was not excitement. It was subconscious fear of something yet to emerge.
You obviously don’t live here. This is my personal resounding “fuck you” while completely mirroring your words. You have no inkling of which you speak. What you would have us do is nigh impossible.
Our only hope is that a unifying event will de-polarize our population and unify our resolve.
While we stand divided we shall fall united.
They’re not even get grifted by the Monorail guy from the Simpsons, they get grifted by a fat, stupid pedophile that shits his pants. Crayy
Au contraire
It doesn’t take “people”
Just one person who loves beautiful WWII Italian music
Bella ciao, baby.
I get second hand embarrassment from the lack of spine in the everyday American. I thought they’d care about democracy. I was very much wrong.
I didn’t think the people propping up this administration ever cared about democracy but I didn’t think they’d cheer for themselves being cuked multiple times a day by the wealthy elite who are spitting down at them from the literal palace trump is building on top of the corpose of the home of the American people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_embarrassment
Finally! I had no idea we did have this term in the English language!
We should upgrade it… I feel Entromped! Or she makes me Tromparrased!
Democracy is when we’re allowed to own guns.
So to them it’s all in the green.
Til you tell them why they’re allowed to have guns. Then they put them back in the safe again, no one wants to actually use their guns for that reason, even if that reason is very much in play, at this very moment. I’m very disappointed in the American people.
People are successfully resisting armored gunmen with sheer numbers and their bare hands. Perhaps it is you who is uninformed.
I want to have so much hope and optimism going into the mid-terms next year. But, even those hopes and dreams have been dashed simply because of how unwilling and defeatist a lot of Americans are to doing anything that’s happening infront of them.
We just sit there and take the rape.
I hope Trump’s “Let them eat bread” moment comes soon
Just out of curiosity, in this fantasy scenario does the military:
a) unanimously decides to join the “anty-Trump” movement and overseas peaceful transition of power
b) watches idly while ICE and secret service massacres protesters
c) splits into pro and anti Trump factions and starts civil war
?
I know a lot of people in the military. If you were on the inside, you’d see a lot of sudden, mostly innocuous incompetence, because the last thing most people in the military want to hear is someone telling them how to do their job. Couple that with most people in the military being relatively sane, and I’d bet you’ll start to see operations get canceled or failed or reschedule due to all sorts of “oopsies”.
The modern military has never had to deal with an insurrectionist in the oval office though, so who knows, but I don’t think you’d see open rebellion from the armed forces, just epic sandbagging.
Caveat: This doesn’t count any private armies the assholes in charge raise up, like how they’re trying to turn ICE into their own Einsatzgruppen. those won’t be staffed with military or ex military, they’ll primarily be disaffected, uneducated young men they can control almost exclusively via propaganda.
If ICE ever started a shooting skirmish with a deployment of the National Guard, they’d have difficulty identifying the ICE member’s bodies afterwards. Military units have discipline, but if they get fired on, all bets are off.
That’s an interesting idea. 54-58% of military voted for Trump. So you think that half of the army would just sit there while the other half blocked their deployment or do you think that by the time people rise against Trump most of the military will stop supporting him?
I’m sure if you break that down by branch you’ll see it line up mostly by education. The Air Force has a lot less maga in it than the Marines, for example.
Maybe he should say, “let them eat cake”
Let them eat big macs.
I’m still convinced that “The Ball Room” is actually the name of the strip club he’s buidling there in the East Wing rather than anything else.
It clearly satisfies his gold toilet fetish
NORMALLY this would get me to Maybe Note Possibly vote Republican NEXT election BUT he’s ALSO Kidnapping Children AND defending Child Sex Traffickers so REPUBLICAN TIL I DIE! Which might be Soon because I have no SNAP and no Healthcare anymore!
