Never, in the long history of the United States of America, has one man taken so much from so many to spend on so few.
If you think that might be exaggeration, I will politely point you to the president’s remarks yesterday. With one day left to make his case to the country, Donald Trump walked down to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, stood in front of a poster board reading “Back, and more beautiful than ever!” and addressed an audience of a few dozen people in folding chairs. This was his closing argument for the midterm elections.
“The pipes now are totally renovated!” he began, enthusiastically. Words the American people have been waiting a lifetime to hear.
He held up a photograph of a rusty drainpipe. Then he held up another of a dumpster.
“It’s a massive piece of pool,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at it. The new pipes, he explained, are “very important in terms of the algae and other things. And it’s a complete job, and we’re very proud of it.”
If you missed it, we recapped this remarkable speech on our show last night. But I’ll sum it up for you: to make his case for keeping the MAGA movement in power, the president took Americans on a meandering verbal tour of his vanity projects and how much redecorating he’s been doing (on their dime) in the nation’s capital.
Highlights include his observations that the reflecting pool behind him now has “great reflectivity” and the “bad aroma” is now gone…
… that the new granite around it is not necessarily “new” because granite “literally has thousands of years of life”…
…that the Corinthian columns at the White House are “the most beautiful in the world”…
…that the grass he’s replaced around the building was necessary and that grass is “like the human being, has a life also”…
…that his ballroom and brand new helipad are getting “rave reviews” and that the latter was needed because “they were landing helicopters — big, new helicopters, they were landing it literally in the mud”…
…that he’s making a final push to build his arch which “from a beautification standpoint, it will be the most beautiful arch in the world”…
…that the structure, being built in his honor, “will be one of the great things we’ve ever done”…
…and that he’s been hard at work ripping up a public golf course in DC because it was in “a very dangerous and horrible condition.” That last one was important. The president clearly sensed how alarmed Americans have been about the “dangers” of the golf course. And yesterday, Trump finally put those fears to rest.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum summed up the afternoon from the little stage: “The president’s a builder. You can’t keep him away!”
By our producer’s count, 61 percent of his remarks went to his own renovation projects and less than a quarter to the election itself. When he finally got around to it, he conceded that “for some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms.”
He closed his remarks: “I could get into the nation, but for that, you don’t have enough time.” Alas, not enough time to talk about high prices and data centers. Only the stuff that matters, like a gold-speckled Oval Office.
If you expected the White House staff to be wiping their jaws off the floor in response to the single most out-of-touch speech ever delivered by an American president before an election, you’d be wrong. Very wrong. None of this surprised the people who work for him.
As CNN reported yesterday:
“Aides have long said Trump is at his happiest when working on the renovation projects — which, aside from the ballroom and pool, also include a proposed triumphal arch, a new helipad, paved-over Rose Garden, driveway stone, guest bathroom, colonnade decor, portico plaster work, two 100-foot flagpoles and an ongoing attempt to inject as much gold as possible into the Oval Office.”
Voters at least got to see their president happy.
And lest they forget what gives him joy, Trump stood in front of the most symbolic symbol of it that’s ever symbolized presidential malfeasance. Trump personally ordered renovations to the Reflecting Pool that hardly anyone was asking for (and without congressional authorization), handed the job to a favored contractor without competitive bidding, and watched it fill with algae. He blamed vandals, had five people arrested, and demanded his handpicked prosecutor charge anyone who touched the water. It turned out the contractor caused the damage. So taxpayers paid to fix it a second time for the president. And in the process, the Pool has become the most powerful exhibit of Trump’s corruption.
Even if the White House staff wasn’t amazed, I was.
Indeed, my closing argument for the midterms was a 35-minute film documenting one hundred episodes of alleged corruption since Trump’s reelection— implicating more than a third of a trillion dollars in federal funds, contracts, and deals — laid out on the National Mall for anyone to see. Then his closing argument was to stand on that same Mall, in front of the single clearest symbol of what we documented, and defend it. It felt like Donald Trump and I were working together again. At the very least, we’re on the same page for once.
Lately I’ve been reminding people what Benjamin Franklin told the Constitutional Convention in June of 1787:
“There are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power, and the love of money. Separately each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects.”
The founders knew what unchecked power does to the man who holds it. But they never got to watch it on video like we did yesterday. We now possess the purest example in American history of a president so detached from the people he governs that he believes they want to be subjects, admiring his marble and his helipad from the other side of the rope line.
Historians will not cite Marie Antoinette anymore. No, no, no. They will cite Donald J. Trump. And they will recount how his self-dealing and self-aggrandizement mobilized a nation against him.
This was already going to be a historic election. But yesterday, Trump made it a symbolic one for the ages. He bragged about how he’d flooded the swamp of Washington, D.C. with our money and amidst our misfortune. Today we start draining it for real.
Your friend, in defiance,
P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We literally exist to FIGHT the corruption you just read about. We announce a new effort every week to counter Trump’s abuses of power. That’s what your membership funds. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.
THE REAL CLOSING ARGUMENT
Our explosive documentary is now available for streaming on YouTube HERE or ad-free at CORRUPTIONLAND.org. If you’re in the San Diego area, you can go to a special screening later this week. See below.
DEFIANCE DAILY
In case you missed it, last night’s episode of DEFIANCE Daily is below. Catch our next episode tonight at 5 pm ET!
TRACK THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN READING ROOM & BOOKMOBILE
The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile & Reading Room is in Florida for the midterms. It will be near West Palm Beach TODAY AND TOMORROW. If you’re in the area, RSVP now to experience it for yourself.
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