Trump’s Mount Rushmore trip is all about the optics

Despite our differences, as Americans, we can all join together in the hope that when an enormous fireworks display happens at Mount Rushmore on Friday, it doesn’t spark a wildfire in the Black Hills National Forest. As in 2020, when the Trump administration suspended an 11-year ban on fireworks at the memorial, the show is being staged amid cautions about fire risk. The threat of catastrophe for a presidential photo op — indeed, the show appears to be largely for Trump’s benefit, as he will be in attendance — is par for the course in Trump’s Fourth of July celebrations. 

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Let’s start with Graft Force One. Trump is scheduled to fly to South Dakota on the $400 million jet gifted by the government of Qatar, just one high-profile part of the grubbiest presidential cash grab in 250 years of American history. 

According to the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, presidents aren’t supposed to accept gifts, certainly not ones worth mid-nine-figures. But since the terms of the deal say the plane is in the temporary possession of the U.S. government until Trump leaves office, when it becomes the property of his “library” — i.e., he can do whatever he wants with it — it’s not supposed to count. 

As mind-boggling as the size of that gift was when it was announced, it turns out that pales in comparison to the ways Trump has increased his personal wealth since returning to office. Trump made more than $2 billion last year, mostly through crypto schemes, according to a mandatory government financial disclosure report released Tuesday. Crypto appears to have provided an easy path to influence. In one case, as The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser — also known as its “Spy Sheik” — secretly invested half a billion dollars in a Trump family crypto company. Soon after, the Trump administration agreed to allow the export of hundreds of thousands of advanced computer chips to the UAE, a high priority for the Emirati government.  

What the Qataris got in exchange for Trump’s new plane is not clear. “There are no conflicts of interest,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told MS NOW. 

But the president is excited about the plane, which was retrofitted at considerable taxpayer expense

 and required a massive $320 million custom hangar at Joint Base Andrews. “This was a gift from a country that’s treated us very well,” Trump said before boarding for its first official flight Wednesday. “Frankly, we couldn’t build a plane like this,” he added, although the plane was built in Washington state by Boeing. 

Never mind that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to upgrade the communications and security systems of the Qatari-gifted Boeing 747-8 for presidential travel for a mere two years, until the long-delayed jets ordered directly from Boeing are slated to arrive. Apparently, only the jet the Qataris draped in American-flag colors would do. (“You can low-key it. Or you can show it,” Trump also said Wednesday.) Journalists who toured the plane reported lie-flat leather seats equipped with massage functions and library bookcases. On some of the walls, the Journal reported, hung “[p]atriotic pieces of art, including a photo of a duck swimming in the Reflecting Pool.” (Yes, the Reflecting Pool, whose botched renovation now stands as a symbol for this presidency, complete with outlandish promises, bumbling incompetence and angry blame-shifting.) 

Trump is clearly pleased that the plane was ready in time for the country’s semiquincentennial celebration. Pity that the festivities under his direction have been so shambolic.

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When preparations began 10 years ago for events marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the idea was that Americans in communities large and small would have the opportunity to reflect on our history and rededicate themselves to the higher ideals that inspired the Revolution. But things like essay contests and library exhibits apparently weren’t, well, Trumpy enough.