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Washington Briefing #6: Under Destruction
This is what the White House campus looked like last Thursday.
Cranes hovered high over the complex as an Ultimate Fighting Championship cage consumed the South Lawn. Behind the North Portico, out of view, is the rubble of the East Wing.
The scene is a grotesque reminder of how Donald Trump has attempted to remake this city in his image. His scowling visage hangs from oversized banners in front of federal buildings. His name is plastered on electronic billboards advertising events celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The beautiful reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial is covered in a tarp. Every time I exit the Metro stop near my hotel, I see a van waiting to take people to the Trump Kennedy Center.
I will be leaving for Philadelphia shortly, so I may not be around when Trump’s name comes off those vans. But a federal judge has ordered the Trump name removed from everything associated with the Kennedy Center, and last week his name started disappearing from some signage and promotional materials.
The Kennedy Center reversal foreshadows how quickly Trump’s quest for immortality will be erased once he loses his grip on power. And it illustrates how completely Trump has abandoned the pretense of governing, where failure follows him wherever he turns, and has withdrawn to a place where he can project grandiosity through shovels and bulldozers.
Those failures loom large.
During my brief time in Washington, Trump has met with more repudiation than at any time in his presidency.
The Senate told him he could not have $1 billion taxpayer dollars to build his ballroom.
The House directed him to end the war in Iran and provide aide to Ukraine while sanctioning Russia.
Then Trump abandoned his $1.8 billion handout to insurrectionists amidst pressure from Congress and the courts.
Headline artists withdrew from an event celebrating America’s 250th birthday when they realized it would have political overtones, leaving Trump to whine that he’d rather retreat to his happy place and hold a MAGA rally instead.
And of course there was the Kennedy Center.
While the House directive will not end the war and the Ukraine bill faces resistance in the Senate, these were serious rebukes of the sort we have not seen before.
Collectively, they signal that Trump’s political influence is waning. This is an intolerable blow to a would-be strongman whose political project depends on the projection of strength, no less to a narcissist who demands constant adulation.
So Trump looks for grandiosity wherever he can find it, turning the simple elegance of the White House into a martial arts venue and superimposing his authoritarian presence on a capitol designed as a paean to democratic ideals.
Because Trump doesn’t know any better, the projection of his image is cheap and garish, the gaudy reflection of a tacky and tasteless man.
But like his presidency, it is all veneer.
One of the first observations I made about Donald Trump when he was elected in 2016 is that he cannot be president. Not because he lacks the intellect, although he does. Not because he lacks the discipline, although that is also the case.
It is because he lacks any interest in the job.
He may love the trappings of power, but he has no use for the substance of that power beyond its utility for self-aggrandizement.
Trump can certainly serve as president. But he can never be president.
Presidents build things—they do the hard work of advancing programs and policies they believe will boost the welfare and security of the country. Donald Trump is not a builder and never has been. He’s just a marketer who slaps his name on everything within his reach and cares little for the destruction he leaves in his wake.
If Washington today looks like a tinny monument to Donald Trump, it is because tinny monuments are all he has ever built.
Trump’s remake of Washington is as empty as his administration, and both are wearing very thin.
As I walk the streets of the Capitol during these waning days of my trip, I find myself wondering whether Trump’s cheapening of the city may be a reflection of the entire MAGA enterprise, and whether both may be reaching the point of collapse.
That is the impression I have as I prepare to return home. I’ll have a more complete reflection in my final Washington Briefing on Friday.
This gave me some hope. Yesterday DT was at a planned interview, he was his usual obnoxious self until he started in about the “rigged” California elections and he turned raving lunatic! We can not have our president going around calling everyone stupid and low IQ. He has lied about the elections being rigged for so long he seems to believe the lie. He needs someone who will arrange to have him institutionalized.
Monster Truck rally next? Structures can be removed. Grass regrows.
Concepts are harder to repair.
Integrity is being sought.
Keep on keeping on.