Donald Trump is unhappy with the way things are going in Afghanistan. Which puts him in a club with 7 billion members. Exactly no one is thrilled about the long American presence in Afghanistan, the shakiness of the Afghan government, or the way that the Taliban, ISIS, and other groups keep the level of misery high and stability low.
But Donald Trump found a unique, incredibly Trumpian way to express his displeasure.
… Trump compared the policy review process to the renovation of a famed New York restaurant in the 1980s, officials said.
That sounds perfectly appropriate.
Trump told his advisers that the restaurant, Manhattan's elite '21' Club, had shut its doors for a year and hired an expensive consultant to craft a plan for a renovation. After a year, Trump said, the consultant's only suggestion was that the restaurant needed a bigger kitchen.
Officials said Trump kept stressing the idea that lousy advice cost the owner a year of lost business and that talking to the restaurant's waiters instead might have yielded a better result.
The idea that talking to some of the people in the actual “boots on the ground” might give some insight isn’t a bad one. But there are big problems with Trump’s story that go beyond just comparing a war with a night club. Chief among them—everything about Trump’s parable, everything, is absolutely wrong.
The 21 Club is a Midtown Manhattan establishment that requires a jacket and tie to sit down for lunch and the menu is described as “country club classic.” Just the kind of place where Donald Trump loves to visit for a $36 burger (seriously) and obviously the go-to metaphor when describing a war.
In the Trump version, 21 Club paid an “expensive consultant” who camped on the restaurant for a year and offered no good advice. But in real life …
The '21' Club, which has been one of Trump's favorite New York spots, closed for two months in 1987 while it underwent a full renovation and reopened to great fanfare.
In the real world, it wasn’t a “a year of lost business.” It was two months. And those two months didn’t end with just advice to enlarge the kitchen, they covered a full renovation—one that led to a successful reopening. So, the truth is that the 21 Club hired a consultant, who kept the restaurant down for a minimal amount of time and gave good advice.
What made Trump think it was a year? Who knows. His burger cravings probably made it seem longer. Where did he get the idea that the only thing the consultant said was enlarge the kitchen? Maybe he got a call from the Boy Scouts.
But you can bet that this tale of Donald Trump’s frustration in not being able to get into his favorite lunch spot really drove home to the generals just how miserable things were in Afghanistan.