In your kindest thoughts dear Kossacks, please take a moment to pity the poor good burghers and denizens of Bedminster, New Jersey. When the groundhog saw his shadow this year, I think the citizens must have consoled themselves with the thought of at least a six week reprieve from the cruel fate that awaits them with the turn of the calendar.
What the hell am I babbling about this time? Simply this. In a few short weeks, after months of pestering the locals like a kid poking a stick in a cage at the zoo, Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort will be closing for the season. I guess the uber rich don’t like to spend their summers on the links in high humidity, swatting mosquito’s the size of sanitation trucks. Yay for West Palm beach! No more lane closures, and the local flight schools can take off and land to their hearts content.
But the blessing bestowed on the city of West Palm Beach, Florida will become the bane and curse of the city of Bedminster, New Jersey, the home of Hair Furor’s preferred summer digs, the Trump National Golf Course, located there. This is a mixed blessing that apparently already has some of the local birds twittering nervously, according to a new REPORT on Politico.com.
Turns out that the local denizens of Bedminster have already had a fleeting brush with what is about to become their new weekend reality, and had mixed feelings about it. In November of 2016, then President elect Trump went up there for the weekend to host a series of interviews for various cabinet position possibilities. That 3 day trip alone cost the city more than $3,600 in police overtime, and the city has estimated that 7 Presidential junkets could cost them over $300,000.
In preparation, city authorities have already written the federal government about reimbursement, and been told that there is a $7M DOJ slush fund for payments to localities for Presidential protection expenses, but they have no idea of how much if any of that money they might receive. Politico was also unable to get an answer to that question.
It would appear that as in most things Trump, the media is helping to fuel consternation among the natives. They have had easy, maybe too easy for their taste access to the horror stories coming out of West Palm Beach from fed up residents and city officials. One particular concern is already being aired;
No matter what mode of transportation he takes, local aviators are bracing for flight restrictions that will keep private planes out of nearby skies when Trump is in residence. “That’s bad for Somerset. Shuts us down when he’s there,” said Lorne Sheren, senior aviation medical examiner at one of the three privately owned public airports in the area.
The Secret Service is rather cagey about how the imposter President will actually get to Trump National, but neither choice is primo for the residents. When he made his little jaunt in November, there was widespread disruption and street closures when his motorcade pootled on up from Manhattan,. One option is to fly a smaller 757 version of Air Force One to Morristown and motorcade over. This will bring out the repeated headaches of street closures and delays locally. The other option is to fly Air Force One into Newark, and then take Marine One to his club. Anybody who has been around a helicopter that size in use will tell you that it is not a quiet as a whispered declaration of love. And either way, local privately owned airports take it in the shorts.
Local Bedminster residents, already spooked by the advance warnings beamed up at them by West Palm Beach are trying to get an early handle on the situation;
Locals are concerned. At a March town hall meeting, resident Jane Schumann told the all-Republican town board that she’d heard from friends in South Florida who were being told to expect higher tax bills to help pay for Trump’s frequent visits.
“West Palm Beach is a lot bigger than we are. Those people are a little more affluent than we are. Has there been any thought to that?” she asked.
You gotta love it. Nothing motivates like greed, and there’s nothing like the spectre of higher taxes to bring out the masses. Mayor Steve Parker tried to allay the fears, once again bringing up the possibility of reimbursement, and reminding folks that Trump has in the past, when still a private citizen, paid the city for extra security costs for events at his club. I think this is a pipe dream, since I haven’t seen or heard a single word about Trump digging into his deep pockets to pitch in to West Palm Beach’s expenses, and the whole point of his Presidency is to rake money in, not to pay it out. Finally Parker seemed to admit that whatever the outcome, Bedminster is really more or less along for the ride, there isn’t much they can do.
And the funny thing is that His Lowness may not be the only pain in the ass that the residents will have to endure traffic and road closure problems from. There is one problem that West Palm Beach did not have to face, that of another Trump with an intrusive security presence in their midst;
Ivanka Trump and her husband, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, were married at Bedminster, and the three-story, five-bedroom home they use there got approval for its own major expansion last year, ahead of the birth of their third child.
Local Democrats are already signalling their willingness, nay, enthusiasm to give the pocket Nero a raucous welcome whenever he decides to pop over to pass an idle weekend, and one can reasonably expect that they won’t do like they’ve done in West Palm Beach, and promote petition drives to pester the government for reimbursement.
So, while the residents of Bedminster may be in for a more turbulent summer than the peaceful ones they have enjoyed in the past, I have a bit of trouble in working up much sympathy for them. Trump National is the second largest taxpayer they have, they’ve been riding that train for years now, time to pay the piper.
What I’m looking forward to with bated breath is the release of the first health department inspection of the kitchens of Trump National. Maybe it’ll be toxic beef and pork this time, just for variety’s sake.