Donald Trump doesn’t drain the swamp, regardless of his guarantees. He simply places his personal model on it, like all the pieces else he touches, and sells. And he transports it: Wherever Trump is, the swamp creatures swarm to be close to him.
Since he received the election Nov. 5, the habitat for hangers-on has been Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s waterfront Palm Seashore playground in Florida, a state famously hospitable to swamps. Sycophants, billionaires, lobbyists and job seekers jostle amid the unswamplike gaudy gilt splendor, carrying golf apparel by day and formal put on by evening, in hopes of an opportunity to press their particular pursuits earlier than the Swamp King.
Postelection headlines inform the story. “Contained in the Trump-Fueled Lobbying Frenzy from Mar-a-Lago” learn one, adopted by, “Okay Road lobbyists are flocking to Florida, because the nexus of energy below Donald Trump shifts from Washington to Palm Seashore.” Another: “A Spike in Demand, and Charges, for Lobbyists with Ties to Trump.” And from the BBC: “Energy within the Palms: Contained in the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago.”
Not in reminiscence, probably not ever, has the nation seen such overt, unapologetic and public shows of kowtowing to, and deal-making with, a U.S. president or president-elect by the nation’s wealthy and well-connected. Get used to it. Trump’s favorite historical period is the late nineteenth century Gilded Age; he’s re-creating it for the twenty first century.
Yet one more current article on the Trump transition, headlined “Dinner at Mar-a-Lago Is for Energy Video games,” famous that when Trump enters the patio eating room nightly, the assembled company give him a standing ovation. At a middle desk, circled by rope to maintain lesser beings at bay, the president-elect doubles as DJ, queuing up songs on his iPad — together with David Bowie’s “House Oddity” when the world’s richest man, EV innovator, rocket entrepreneur and ubiquitous “First Buddy” Elon Musk, arrives to affix Trump within the middle ring.
Trump “sits proper on the market with everyone,” a rich Pennsylvanian who’s a Mar-a-Lago member ($1 million upfront, $20,000 yearly) told the Washington Publish. “It’s a extra subtle swamp, but it surely’s loopy,” one other habitue mentioned. “You go to the membership and run into all these creatures.” A 3rd member, nonetheless, griped that so many supplicants crowd the place as of late that he typically can’t get a desk.
However on Thursday night the waters there parted for Trump’s particular visitor, the world’s second-richest man, Jeff Bezos, proprietor of Amazon, aerospace firm Blue Origin (a Musk competitor) and the Washington Publish — all enterprises that might be helped or harm by Trump administration actions. Bezos is among the many tech CEOs whose corporations have donated $1 million for Trump’s inauguration festivities, having by no means performed so for previous inaugurals. Additionally on the center-stage desk, natch, was Bezos frenemy Musk.
Moreover Trump himself — with his cryptocurrency business, majority stake within the social media community Fact Social, actual property properties, books, licensing offers, inventory holdings in a number of industries and new MAGA-branded merch by the day — Musk would be the individual with probably the most to realize from the approaching administration, and probably the most actual and obvious conflicts of curiosity in mixing enterprise and authorities work. Musk has already seen a hefty return on his quarter-billion-dollar investment in getting Trump elected, a jaw-dropping determine however one which represents simply 0.05% of his fortune, which Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index places at practically a half-trillion {dollars}, $474 billion.
Musk hasn’t needed to await Trump to take workplace to profit. Flaunting his affect as co-chief of Trump’s not-really-a-department Division of Authorities Effectivity with Vivek Ramaswamy (one other billionaire, barely, according to Forbes), Musk final week killed a bipartisan year-end spending bundle with a fusillade of greater than 150 social media assaults on X — beating Trump to the punch. And down with the invoice went its provisions to restrict investments in China that could have limited those who Musk is pursuing.
Simply days earlier than, on Monday, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had written to Trump calling for safeguards towards Musk’s conflicts of curiosity as he workout routines Trump’s mandate to advocate methods to slash each federal spending and laws. For somebody like Musk with many billions’ value of federal contracts to proceed with out guardrails, Warren mentioned, was “an invite for corruption on a scale not seen in our lifetimes.”
That phrase might apply to the complete tradition that Trump is constructing round himself for his second time period. For years in Washington, affect–peddling virtually to the purpose of bribery has in impact turn out to be legalized, thanks largely to a string of Supreme Court decisions making prosecutions tougher and money-giving simpler. Each events take full benefit of the lax atmosphere, however no another openly than Trump.
Suffice it to say that within the Trump swamp, Warren’s pitch for protections towards Musk’s private aggrandizement wasn’t taken severely. In spite of everything, the boss himself is resisting federal ethics constraints that certain different trendy presidents; his group belatedly submitted an ethics code as required by the Presidential Transition Act, however didn’t apply the necessities to Trump, in keeping with the nonpartisan Marketing campaign Authorized Middle. Crew Trump’s dismissive response to Warren got here from Trump’s transition spokeswoman, who denigrated the senator as “Pocahontas,” echoing Trump’s schoolyard taunt.
The president-elect’s personal tackle the potential for Musk’s self-dealing wasn’t any extra reassuring when Time raised the difficulty in its interview after it designated him the journal’s “Individual of the Yr.”
One of many interviewers, noting that Musk can be overseeing federal companies that regulate his corporations, which embody SpaceX, Tesla, X, Starlink, brain-implant firm Neuralink and extra, requested, “Isn’t {that a} battle of curiosity?” Trump: “I don’t suppose so.” The questioner adopted up, stating that Musk has been speaking about cuts to NASA and SpaceX is a competitor. “Isn’t that the textbook definition of a battle of curiosity?”
Trump deflected: “He places the nation earlier than … his firm.”
As Trump likes to say, “We’ll see.”
