As the United States steadily lurches toward oligarchy, Trump is not bashful in telling his “special people” exactly what he thinks of them. He has even been inviting wealthy country club members to sit in on interviews with his potential Cabinet nominees.
Last November, in a dinner and cocktail reception at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump let his paying country club members and fellow one percenters know just how special they are. In a tape that has been leaked by Politico, Trump called club members the “special people” of the world, making Mitt Romney’s 47% moment look charitable by comparison.
Trump had been holding interviews of people he is considering for his cabinet and had some scheduled the next day. In true oligarch fashion, he invited his country club members to join him in the interviews.
“We’re doing a lot of interviews tomorrow — generals, dictators, we have everything,” Trump told his elite crowd of wealthy country club members. “You may wanna come around. It’ll be fun. We’re really working tomorrow. We have meetings every 15, 20 minutes with different people that will form our government.”
“We’re going to be interviewing everybody — Treasury, we’re going to be interviewing Secretary of State,” he continued. “We have everybody coming in — if you want to come around, it’s going to be unbelievable….so you might want to come along.”
Trump is preparing to spend his third weekend in a row vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he has been holding Presidential meetings in the open. Many people are getting uncomfortable with his seeming aloofness when it comes to national security issues and brazenness when it comes to shilling his country club and properties.
This administration continues to blend government and business in questionable ways from Trump’s weekly visits to his Florida resorts after raising membership fees to challenging retailers who don’t carry his family’s merchandise. Many people are calling for legislative action to make such dealings illegal.
Trump seems to want to include his wealthy club members an friends in White House decision making processes. He recently told a paid member of his club, “We were just talking about who we [are] going to pick for the FCC, who [are] we going to pick for this, who we gonna accept — boy, can you give me some recommendations?”
Always the showman, Trump does have a knack for drawing attention, but doesn’t seem to know where lines should be drawn between Presidential action and profiteering. He still refuses to disclose his tax returns, so exactly how he is profiting from his Presidency is unknown. The United States is seemingly being steered into some form of kleptocratic oligarchy by Mr. Trump and his lower and middle class supporters seem fine with that. How far will they let him go?
