Dem
47
GOP
53
Back in the Trump v1.0 years, Donald Trump's map and sharpie became a huge story. He made a small and understandable mistake in a tweet about Hurricane Dorian. He could have just admitted he misspoke (well, really, mis-tweeted). Or, failing that, he could have just let the matter go, since there's always a new cloud of B.S. to crowd things out the next day. But instead, he doubled and tripled and quadrupled down, and tried to gaslight everyone that he'd been right all along, using a clumsily doctored map in support of his claim.
That may have been the first major news story of Trump's presidency with the lesson that no matter how small the mistake, or the slight, he just. can. not. let. things. go. We have been reminded of that incident a lot this summer, as there seems to be story after story of Trump embarrassing himself by digging holes deeper and deeper and deeper. We know, at this point, that he will never, ever admit to being wrong. But we still marvel at his unwillingness to let go of obvious lost causes.
One such story, which we've written about many times, including earlier this week, was the mess with Air Force One. Trump should never have accepted the plane from Qatar, a choice that was as grifty as can be. That said, he's so money-obsessed, be probably couldn't help himself. Then, he should never have tried to use the Qatari plane before it was ready, at least not for international travel. That, he certainly could have helped himself. Then, when it turned into a real security problem, once he needed to fly home from Turkey, he told obvious tall tales that did not stand up to scrutiny. After he was called on his lies, he told different tall tales, that were also not believable. Finally, it came out that he actually snuck off the real Air Force One to a secret plane, using a catering truck as his getaway vehicle. This left Qatar Force One on the ground in Turkey and the real Air Force One serving as a decoy (unbeknownst to the people on board). It also gave the story new legs, yet again, and made Trump the butt of jokes.
Another example is the reflecting pool. The administration should have just left the damn thing alone, because there were so many ways it could go wrong, and so few it could go right. However, Trump is obsessed with leaving "monuments" to his leadership, plus it was a grift opportunity. So, as with the Qatari plane, an answer of "Nah, let's not do it" was never really in the cards. Still, from that point forward, Trump and his administration did everything wrong. They hired a contractor who had no idea how to execute this kind of project. Trump, in the Beast, drove onto the un-cured new surface, damaging it. The administration, which engages in all manner of science denial, neglected to consider what would happen if you made the pool blue (hint: warmer water, which means more algae). Then, Trump's underlings tried to pass the buck, charging half a dozen people with sabotaging the pool. U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro is enough a lackey that she was willing to bring indictments, but even she had to admit the government had no case, and so had to dismiss the matter before it ever got close to an actual trial.
And despite all of this, Trump is once again stamping his feet and pushing hard for the DoJ to refile the charges. Someone in the administration has also posted (pathetic) signs at the reflecting pool that assert that it's really all Joe Biden's fault. Trump has reiterated that point, numerous times, on his social media platform for people whose emotional age is 3.
The point here is that it's not one bad decision, or one unforced error. It is a whole litany of them, piled on top of each other, with predictable results each time. Trump rarely, if ever, gets what he wants when he becomes obsessed with trying to "fix" things. He just heaps on more embarrassment, and more losses. The reason we still have trouble making sense of it is that while he definitely hates to be wrong, he has also been image-obsessed for at least half a century. You would think that protecting his image would cause him to give up on some of these quixotic ventures. But not so much, it would seem.
And that actually brings us to the main driver of this item, which is the Kennedy Center. It is technically true that Trump did not directly try to add his name to that venue. However, he stuffed the board of directors with loyal lackeys, very clearly made his wishes known, and then did nothing to keep changes consistent with those wishes from being implemented. So, he gets to take ownership of the decision to rename the Kennedy Center, even if he was not quite as directly involved in instigating that as he was with other "initiatives."
Of course, as with Qatar Force One, and as with the reflecting pool, it quickly turned disastrous. The moment Trump's name was on there, artists and audience members began fleeing in droves, leaving the Center without enough programming, and without enough people to fill even a fraction of the seats. The administration tried to sue some of the artists who pulled out; thus far, that has not gone well. Just this week, for example, a judge ruled in favor of Chuck Redd, who canceled his Christmas Eve booking, and ordered the government to pay $252,480 to Redd to cover his legal costs.
When it became clear that the Kennedy-Trump center, as long it bore that name, would be a mostly empty venue (and thus an embarrassment), the administration contrived to shut the place down for "renovations," scheduled to last for 2 years. Conveniently, that is most of the rest of Trump's time in office (especially since construction projects pretty much always run long). A whole bunch of people sued over either the name change, the renovations, or both, and multiple judges said that Trump's name could not be on the building, while it is not acceptable to begin 2 years of renovation without jumping through the necessary bureaucratic hoops.
That brings us up this week. As with all these other petty battles, Trump and/or his underlings at the Kennedy Center just cannot let this go. His name was indeed removed, at the business end of a court order (backed by a threat of contempt, and possible jail time). However, tarps were put in place, so that nobody could see and/or photograph the once-again Trump-free exterior. As it turns out, all of this was buying time for the board to find a way to do an end run around the court orders. And they think now that they have cracked the code.
Per an announcement made yesterday, Trump's name is now going back up on the wall, after a new vote by the Kennedy Center board. To comply with the letter of the ruling, but certainly not the spirit, it will not be presented as the Kennedy-Trump center. Instead, it will be "The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump," with the "Trump" portion carved into the marble of the facade. Meanwhile, the board has now conducted a nominal study, and has once again voted to shut down for 2 years of renovations.
In the short term, this is probably going to fly, because it's not directly violating the court order. The venue will not be named after Trump anymore, and his name won't technically be posted ON it, it will be carved IN it. Meanwhile, the nominal study that was conducted was probably enough to satisfy the rules regarding due consideration of major changes. Undoubtedly, the same people who sued before will sue again, but this time they will probably lose.
However, and this is another one of those foreseeable outcomes, this is eventually going to end in embarrassment for Trump. At this point, the venue is so tainted, it's not going to be able to attract performers or audience members until he's out of office. So, the 2-year shutdown is much less momentous than it would have been if it took place during any other president's term. Meanwhile, the next time there is a non-Trump-packed board, that "Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump" is going to be gone. It may be harder to get rid of when it's carved into the marble, but it will be gotten rid of nonetheless. And that will be a news cycle or two worth of stories with headlines like "The Final Insult" and "Donald Who?" There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that he gets the permanent monument that he's hungering so desperately for.
We've been pondering this item all week, and the Kennedy Center stuff finally caused us to move forward. As chance would have it, The Bulwark staff had the same thought we did about this general subject. They had an item yesterday headlined "Trump's Summer of Lost Causes" (and note that we had already written the sentence above, about "his unwillingness to let go of obvious lost causes," before we saw the Bulwark piece). They also wrote about the reflecting pool and Air Force One (and the piece was published before the Kennedy Center news broke). Andrew Egger, who wrote the reflecting pool portion of the piece, concludes thusly:
In ordinary times, under an ordinary administration, this sort of story would be shocking and deeply unnerving, revealing extraordinary sycophancy at the Justice Department and extraordinary contempt for the criminal-justice system at the White House.
But maybe I'm crazy: I've found myself reading such stories lately with an unexpected sense of reassurance, bordering on relief. They're a mark of just how far Trump has fallen off the pace. This man, who views himself as a world-historical figure à la Caesar or Napoleon, who once plotted a glorious return to power that would see him driving his enemies before him like an avenging angel--he now finds himself instead frittering away his last days of trifecta power flogging his incompetent lackeys to figure out some way, any way, to make somebody pay for the violence done to his poor Reflecting Pool. Total stasis never tasted so good.
We find nothing there that we disagree with.
And finally, let's tag on one other bit of news that isn't quite the same thing, but comes from a similar place, because it speaks to Trump's childlike inability to tame his id. We wrote yesterday about White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's decision to quit at the end of this month, a development that came on rather suddenly. Details have begun to leak out, and it seems that a big reason she decided she was done with the whole thing is that Trump would not leave her alone during her maternity leave, calling constantly to ask questions and to chat. He also pressured her to return early from leave, which she did. It is, if we may say so, very Trump-like that he can't even behave respectfully with something as important as this. (Z)