Jeanine Pirro Amplifies Trump’s Vengeance Crusade — and the Whole Thing Is Getting Shockingly Tacky .DV

Sev­er­al of the world’s sig­na­ture moun­tains are locat­ed in coun­tries of one-man rule. I’ve wit­nessed the per­va­sive pres­ence of boss men on trips abroad. 

The expe­ri­ences have strength­ened my feel­ings for my own country.

Eng­lish lan­guish news broad­casts in Kenya would begin with the same nine words: “His Excel­len­cy, The Pres­i­dent, Daniel Arap Moi, said (or declared, or ordered) today.” The news in Nepal was that King Biren­da was tour­ing the west­ern reach­es of the Himalayan nation, which bor­ders India and Chi­na in south Asia. 

How dif­fer­ent from our repub­li­can tra­di­tions and coequal branch­es of gov­ern­ment — or so I thought then. Nowa­days, I am not so sure. 

The Unit­ed States has a boss­man, a grifter with bad taste who is recast­ing the gov­ern­ment in his image. Don­ald Trump’s reach extends to cul­ture, archi­tec­ture and sport, plus the polic­ing of lan­guage and purg­ing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Rupert Mur­doch’s FNC, this week, had Trump show­ing off plans for the White House to right wing pun­dit Lau­ra Ingra­ham. The coun­try has need­ed a giant ball­room “for one hun­dred and fifty years,” he said. Ingra­ham honed in with a ques­tion: “Where do you get your atten­tion to detail?”

Trump has been vocal­ly crit­i­cal of Jacque­line Kennedy’s refur­bish­ing of the ear­ly 1960s. The cur­rent occu­pant of the premis­es has done up the Oval Office in gold. He has been show­ing off a ren­o­va­tion in mar­ble of the Lin­coln Bath­room. Trump has also inex­cus­ably bull­dozed the East Wing of the White House, where I once joined fel­low scribes for a delight­ful dose of self dep­re­cat­ing humor from First Lady Bar­bara Bush.

Grandios­i­ty is the new theme in treat­ment of the people’s possessions. 

The U.S. Capi­tol has become a can­vass for self glo­ri­fi­ca­tion and whims. 

He has sent tanks rolling through D.C.‘s streets in a Moscow-style mil­i­tary parade. 

Dur­ing a com­mem­o­ra­tion at Arling­ton Nation­al Ceme­tery, he took a page from the Vladimir Putin play­book, recast­ing Vet­er­ans Day as “Vic­to­ry Day”. 

The Sec­re­tary of Defense is being called the Sec­re­tary of War.

I lived four years in the capital’s Fog­gy Bot­tom neigh­bor­hood, a few min­utes walk from the John F. Kennedy Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts. It was an island of bipar­ti­san­ship in the cap­i­tal, with glo­ri­ous per­for­mances by the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra under the baton of exiled Russ­ian cel­list Mstislav Rostropovich. 

The Rea­gans may have been watch­ing The Sound of Music at the White House, but new music and artis­tic expres­sion could be wit­nessed at the Kennedy Center.

Trump has fired the Center’s board of direc­tors, installing a new line­up of par­ti­sans (includ­ing Lau­ra Ingraham). 

Out went the pro­fes­sion­als, in have come Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tives. The new sea­son on stage has begun with — you guessed it — The Sound of Music. 

The New York Times, last week­end, car­ried a wicked­ly fun­ny piece on the result­ing chaos. Seri­ous­ly, how­ev­er, pro­duc­tions such as a sched­uled run of “Hamil­ton” have pulled out. Trump has installed him­self as chair­man. Diver­si­ty is dis­cour­aged. And friends of the Pres­i­dent are push­ing to name the Opera House for Mela­nia Trump.

Trump has branched off in oth­er direc­tions, a path more eas­i­ly tak­en down new­ly paved over grass in White House Rose Gar­den. He would have the Wash­ing­ton Com­man­ders NFL fran­chise stand down and bring back its for­mer name, post­ing: Get it done.

Sports sta­di­ums are America’s present day cul­tur­al mon­u­ments, to which Trump has tak­en notice. The White House is report­ed­ly in backchan­nel talks with the Com­man­ders’ own­ers on nam­ing the team’s new $3.7 bil­lion sta­di­um for Trump.

All this man­ages at once to be grandiose, nar­cis­sis­tic and tacky. 

Espe­cial­ly awful is that Trump is fool­ing around with our trea­sures, the pos­ses­sions of a free peo­ple. A hum­ble ser­vant he is not. Trump has used his online mega­phone to cir­cu­late mock­ups of a Time mag­a­zine cov­er show­ing him­self as king. He insists upon praise, and orders indict­ments of those who have dared to inves­ti­gate him.

I had anoth­er walk­ing des­ti­na­tion dur­ing four-plus years as the Seat­tle Post Intel­li­gencer’s D.C. cor­re­spon­dent. The Jef­fer­son Memo­r­i­al was a des­ti­na­tion for reflec­tion. Our country’s third pres­i­dent stood for lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty, church-state sep­a­ra­tion — themes from the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence that he drafted.

Walls of the memo­r­i­al car­ry quotes from wis­dom that has guid­ed the coun­try for almost 250 years. Jef­fer­son entered pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics when George Wash­ing­ton bowed out, although he could eas­i­ly have won a third term. 

Jef­fer­son was renowned for host­ing din­ners of deep dis­cus­sion, and for oppos­ing John Adams’ over­reach. But in our coun­try this week, cars lined up at food banks while at the White House, Don­ald Trump was din­ing with billionaires.

Joel Connelly is a Northwest Progressive Institute contributor who has reported on multiple presidential campaigns and from many national political conventions. During his career at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he interviewed Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and George H.W. Bush. He has covered Canada from Trudeau to Trudeau, written about the fiscal meltdown of the nuclear energy obsessed WPPSS consortium (pronounced “Whoops”) and public lands battles dating back to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

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