Donald Trump’s main reason for wanting to give his Republican National Convention speech on the South Lawn of the White House is most likely the venerable backdrop and the aura of importance it will lend him. If he can’t have the screaming, adoring crowd he was expecting first in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then in Jacksonville, Florida, at least he can look presidential. But as always with Trump, the grift is never far behind the ego.
Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel has jacked up its prices for the week of the planned kinda-sorta convention. Never cheap, the hotel’s rates for those dates are 60% higher than for the surrounding weeks. Because why only shatter norms and bend ethics laws to the breaking point when you can also make some money off it?
“If it's in D.C., and all these people are coming in to be around a big event for him, they will almost certainly be going to the Trump Hotel,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s Jordan Libowitz told the Daily Beast. “Every major Trumpworld figure will be there.” And they’ll be ready to to pay for the privilege of telling Trump, if they see him, that they’re staying in his hotel.
Other luxury hotels in the District are not raising their rates to the same extent. In fact, they’re cutting them. So it’s specific to the Trump hotel and to the dates around when Trump will be speaking. Consider that as virtual confirmation of the South Lawn ethics disaster. We didn’t need confirmation of Trump’s corruption.