At this point, nobody should be surprised that Donald Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself. After all, even before he scammed his way into the White House, David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post was telegraphing his intent to do just that.
In a detailed series of articles, he found that many of Trump’s philanthropic claims over the years had been exaggerated and often were not truly charitable activities at all.
(The Washington Post, April 10, 2017)
Fahrenthold won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, which highlighted Trump’s bait-and-switch practice of using other people’s money to make charitable donations in his name.
Likewise, nobody should be surprised that Trump is doing many of the things he criticized his predecessor, Barack Obama, for doing. Hell, even I was telegraphing his intent to do just that.
The psychopathology afoot here is called projection. It is defined by people attributing to others traits, faults, and blame that inhere in themselves. And it explains almost every insult Trump has hurled at his opponents throughout this presidential campaign.
So when you hear him calling other people crooked, insecure, weak, beholden to special interests, liars, etc., be mindful that he’s just revealing self-conscious truths about himself, dimwittedly.
(“Forget the Clinton Foundation. Shut Down the Trump Organization!” The iPINIONS Journal, August 26, 2016)
This psychopathology explains so much of what Trump says that it bears repeating almost as much as he repeats some of his signature lies (like the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt).
Alas, I have yet to win my Pulitzer Prize.
As it happens, though, Trump’s golfing is betraying both his self-enrichment and projection. Here is how the Huff Post reported yesterday on this inevitable confluence:
Donald Trump’s golf habit has already cost taxpayers at least $102 million in extra travel and security expenses. …
While Republicans and Trump himself frequently criticized former President Barack Obama for his golf outings, Trump has spent more than twice as many days on the links, to date, as Obama did at the same point in his first term.
Incidentally, Republicans and Trump himself even criticized Obama for the travel costs of his family vacations. But a CNN graphic shows that, while Obama cost taxpayers $97 million in travel costs, Trump is on pace to cost taxpayers $691 million – if he too “serves’ for eight years … God forbid.
But it speaks volumes about Trump’s character (or lack thereof) that his scamming extends even to the way he plays golf. For reports abound that he’s the biggest cheater in the history of the game, so much so that sports writer Rick Reilly documented this for posterity in bestselling book, Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.
Meanwhile, the Huff Post also noted that the $102 million at issue is “255 times the annual presidential salary he volunteered not to take.” But the kicker (or the kick in the gut) is that Trump pocketed most of that because he almost always plays (and stays) at his own resorts. Talk about double dipping!
I telegraphed this too in “Trump, Jared, and Ivanka Forgoing Salaries Is Just Another Bait and Switch,” April 3, 2017:
[I]t’s hardly a sacrifice if the members of this nepotistic triumvirate forgo hundreds of thousands in government salaries only to use their positions to generate hundreds of millions in private income. This is a bait and switch worthy of the Art of the Steal. …
Trump spent the past eight years criticizing Obama for ‘wasting taxpayers’ money on personal travel, especially to play golf. He even vowed he would be so committed to working for the American people that, if elected president, he would never leave the White House.
Except that it’s becoming pointless to call out Trumps congenital hypocrisies and pathological lies, not least because among his many character flaws is the fact that he has no shame.
Still, I remain convinced that no amount of self-enrichment and projection will compensate for the toll of financial loses and reputational damage Trump is bound to suffer, respectively. I elaborated on this in a number of commentaries, including “NY Attorney General Dissolves the Trump ‘Charitable’ Foundation,” December 19, 2018, and “Becoming President Proving Worst Deal Trump Ever Made,” May 19, 2019.
Related commentaries:
Forget Clinton…
NY AG dissolves…
Becoming president proving…
Trump’s bait and switch…
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