Trumpology stories. These are about the psychopathology of Donald Trump
Coming on the heels Trump’s cancelling the White House Times and Post subscription I think this story is especially timely: White House urges all federal agencies to cancel Washington Post and New York Times subscriptions. White House officials say he reads newspapers all the time so if he’s not going to get the Post and Times you can wonder how this will change the routine described in Politico’s “The print reader in chief: Inside Trump’s retro media diet -His newspaper habit is a tool for the president to reward allies and punish foes — and a weapon for those trying to influence him.”
The Newseum is currently housed in a modern building at 555 Pennsylvania Ave NW. Unfortunately it is closing permanently. After more than 11 years and nearly 10 million visitors, the Newseum will close its doors on Dec. 31, 2019. You can read about the reasons here.
It has just been announced that the Trump Organization is exploring sale of the lease of its controversial Washington, D.C. Hotel.
President Donald Trump’s company is exploring the sale of its Washington hotel, which has been at the center of three years’ of ethics complaints and lawsuits accusing him of trying to profit off the presidency.
The Trump Organization said in a statement Friday that it will consider offers to buy it out of a 100-year lease of the building partly because “people are objecting to us making so much money on the hotel.”
Of course nobody is objecting to how much money Trump is making off the hotel. The only objections are that in doing so he is violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
This is what the General Services Administration wrote in 2013 about the lease of the Old Post Office to the Trump Organization:
Today, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced it has completed negotiations with the Trump Organization on a 60 year lease agreement to redevelop and manage the iconic Old Post Office building and annex on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. Under the agreement, $200 million of private sector funds will be invested to restore the 114 year old federal building and convert it into a luxury mixed-use development -- Trump International Hotel, The Old Post Office, Washington D.C. -- that will serve the local community, preserve the facility, and save taxpayer dollars. The pending agreement now moves to Congress for a review period of 30 in-session days.
“Redeveloping the Old Post Office with a private sector partner will save millions of taxpayer dollars while restoring a unique and important historic asset,” said Dan Tangherlini, GSA Acting Administrator. “GSA is committed to delivering the best value for the American people and managing federal real estate assets efficiently. We are pleased that the negotiations have finished and the deal now moves to Congress for review.”
“It is a great honor and privilege to be given the responsibility of transforming one of our country’s most important landmarks into what will be one of the great hotels of the world,” said Donald J. Trump, Chairman and President of The Trump Organization. Continued
No story about this would be complete without reminding ourselves how disgusted we’ve been with this families self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement:
Trump did spend some time lamenting the state of the country: “Everything our country touches, it breaks. … Our military is so degraded. … The tax code is broken. … The education system is broken.” He seemed to be of two minds about the Old Post Office itself, a massive and ornate building that the Trump Organization is leasing from the federal government for $3 million a year. Trump castigated the federal government for allowing the structure to fall into disrepair, even as he praised the “great, great professionals, amazing professionals” at the General Services Administration. An investigation by BuzzFeed showed that the agency awarded Trump the contract to develop the site despite his failure to make good on assurances that he would be partnering with a $28 billion real estate fund and an architect familiar with the site.
The ribbon-cutting itself, held in the hotel’s atrium, seemed to have been conceived as a demonstration of Trump’s appeal to the multiracial service industry workforce in his employ. The faces of Trump hotel workers glowed as they presented his family with ceremonial shears. “I’ve never seen scissors that look so beautiful!” Trump exclaimed. Two more workers held the ends of a long red ribbon so the Trump family could make their ceremonial cuts. Eric, Donald, and Donald Jr. held onto their pieces. Melania, Tiffany, and Ivanka let theirs fall to the floor.
Outside, Sam Curreri, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers from Baltimore, was holding a sign in protest of Trump’s treatment of unionized workers at his Las Vegas hotel. “The jobs he’s creating are short-term,” Curreri said of Trump. As for the campaign, “he’s carried himself terribly. Unprofessionally. He’s nowhere near presidential.” from The Intercept
When I read all this I began to think about who might buy the lease. According to CNN:
No asking price was floated, but it is likely to be expensive. The hotel is in the Old Post Office building, a federally owned property on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol building, and has been a source of controversy since Trump took office in 2017.
Then I got a bright idea.
What a great idea if the owner of The Washington Post who happens to be one of the richest people in the word, Jeff Bezos (worth about $150 billion) could secretly buy the lease through a shell corporation. I think it is debatable that even if Bezos offered twice what he could get from anyone else Trump’s ego and misplaced pride would accept it.
Once it was a done deal Bezos could announce that he was the new owner and that he was leasing it to the Newseum for $1.00 a year.
There is no doubt in my mind that Jeff Bezos, who made and continues to make the bulk of his fortune from Amazon, did not buy (correction, I previously wrote the opposite) The Washington Post because he wanted merely to enrich himself. 2013 he bought the Post for $250 million and only in the past two years has been turning a profit. Amazon reported a record profit in 2018, earning $10.1 billion in net income compared with just $3 billion the prior year. Bezos himself makes $2,489 a second.
You can take a brief tour of the Newseum here. What a loss it would be if it can't relocate.
It would be housed in a very different kind of building than the current one if it was moved to the Old Post Office Building. My feeling is that even if there is less floor space having it in a building which was completed in 1899 and is on the National Historic Register would be a tribute in and of itself to the historic importance and significance of the free press and unfettered dissemination of news.
Benjamin Franklin was the first postmaster general, a job that became a Cabinet level position in 1872. Aside from the fact that both that both the mail and newspapers (originally broadsheets) conveyed news and information in the Colonies another factoid is that It was James Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's older brother, who first made a news sheet which was more than a garbled mass of items. He launched a newspaper called The New England Courant. The Franklin family connection is an interesting newsy coincidence.
The symbolism of it being the pride and joy of Donald Trump who rails against the factual press and calls on journalists with school yard bully taunts would be precious. Not only that, it is only two blocks from the White House.
Saturday, Oct 26, 2019 · 5:33:58 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
In all likelihood, the next Newseum building probably won’t boast rows of video screens showcasing the front page of every daily paper in the nation. (If the worst comes to pass with Gannett, the sample size may get a lot smaller.) The museum doesn’t need a seven-story marble slab to explain why the First Amendment matters, or why it’s under threat, or even why the weird world of media is the way it is. Frankly, a museum of the news that isn’t lean and mean won’t fit the times—for either media or museums.
“Because of how many institutions we’ve seen get themselves into crisis mode after investing in large facilities, we’ve slowed down or tempered our enthusiasm for what a capital facility investment can do for an organization,” Woronkowicz* says. “Prior to the 2008 recession, [buildings] were thought about from the museum’s perspective as a way to show the world you’ve made it. We’re moving away from that idea.”
*Joanna Woronkowicz, is an assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington