“I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.” — Streetcar Named Desire
The things you read in the Sunday papers are frequently much stranger than any novelist can conjure up. At least when Donald Trump is the subject of the story. The Washington Post published a slice of life feature on Trump’s post-presidency life at Mar-a-Lago. Just the normal stuff, mind you, not the times when the FBI is banging on the door at 6:00 a.m. with a search warrant.
Trump does sound like your crazy uncle and Mar-a-Lago sounds like The Home. Trump is bored on his ass, generally speaking, and so the few aides he has around him devote themselves to distracting and amusing him. “Natalie Harp, one of Trump’s employees and a former host on the pro-Trump cable network One America News, often accompanies Trump on his daily golf outings, riding the course in a golf cart equipped with a laptop and sometimes a printer to show him uplifting news articles, online posts or other materials,” the Post reports.
Wow. What a gig that is. I wonder what her job title is, “Fluffer To Has-Been?” “Private Psychiatric Nurse?” Both?
Here’s another image.
On some quiet days, another aide, Molly Michael, who served as Trump’s assistant in the White House, has called around to Trump’s network of allies across the country requesting that they dial the former president to boost his spirits with positive affirmations. There’s nothing going on, she has told them, adding that his friends know how restless he gets when nothing is going on, according to people who have heard her appeal.
He gets restless. And you know what happens to ketchup bottles when Trump gets restless. Ask the bottles, or their remaining kin, they’ll tell you.
Positive affirmations? Man, I thought that went out with EST, or Scientology or the like. Evidently not. A tip of the hat here, to Occupy Democrats, who went the extra mile of imagining what some of these cheery convos between Trump and his sycophants might sound like:
TED CRUZ: “Well hey there…uh, buddy…um, just wanna tell you I’ve still got plenty of Lone Star love for ya…I’ve got some family stuff going on right now (under his breath) not that you care…but HEY, it’s the holidays and I just know things’ll be better for all of us in ’23!”
JIM JORDAN (never taking one single breath): “Oh ah hey there ah Mr ah President ahhh…just calling to tell you I’m your number one fan and that I’ll always be your number one fan and I don’t care what they say about us anyway, I don’t care about that, and I hope you got my handmade Christmas card and I’ll be there in a week to scrub your taint and I thought you said I was alright Spider–” beeeeeep.
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: “Hey Daddy! Sorry I missed you, but I’m standing in the longest line here at CVS. I got the last butt plug in stock, how did we even get here? Anyways, I’m not sure which of my Nazi boyfriends is coming on me–I mean, WITH me–to your New Year’s Day brunch buffet, but I’ll let you know. GODDAMN THIS LINE! If Steve Bannon was here with his gun, I’d have been out of here already.”
STEVE BANNON: “(long burp) Oh did it beep already? Sorry, I’ve been on a three-year bender and haven’t slept since Obama’s second term. Man, I don’t even know what fuckin month this is. Did we do January 6th yet? Who am I calling, again? And where did I leave my pants? Oh wait, I’m still on the phone. Stay positive, buddy! And Happy 4th of July! It’s July, right?”
KARI LAKE: *sings all of “I Just Called to Say I Love You” by Stevie Wonder, then does an invocation to make both of them live forever*
Bravo! Encore! (throws digital roses)
Now you think this is absurd, do you? Read this.
Like he did as president, Trump has looked for ways to turn a profit with his new arrangement: Trump’s staff tried, unsuccessfully, to get the General Services Administration to pay rent at Mar-a-Lago — potentially for his lifetime — for the office space he has created for himself above the club’s ballroom.
A longtime Trump confidant termed his Mar-a-Lago existence, where he has tried to re-create the trappings of the presidency, as “sad.” Comparing it to life at the White House, this person added,“It’s like a Barbie Dream House miniature.”
Right there in black and white, and in the Washington Post, you just read where Donald Trump wants the government to pay for him to have his own play space that mimics the White House. Why he thinks that way is not explained — mercifully. But his aides did try and get the GSA to pay for a post-presidential office at Mar-a-Lago. The GSA said go screw, but they would pay for an office in West Palm Beach. That didn’t happen.
Meanwhile. Trump is a lonely kinda guy, we are told. He misses the reporters always present at his beck and call. Here’s how he lives nowadays.
On a typical day since leaving office, advisers said, Trump gets up early, makes phone calls, watches television and reads some newspapers. Then, six days a week, he plays 18 or sometimes 27 holes of golf at one of his courses. After lunch, he changes into a suit from his golf shirt and slacks and shows up in the office above the Mar-a-Lago ballroom or, when he is in New Jersey, a similar office in a cottage near the Bedminster club’s pool.
By evening, Trump emerges for dinner, surrounded most nightsby adoring club members who stand and applaud at his appearance; they stand and applaud again after he finishes his meal andretires for the night. He often orders special meals from the kitchen and spends time curating the music wafting over the crowd, frequently pushing for the volume to be raised or lowered based on his mood. In the Oval Office, Trump had a button he could push to summon an aide to bring him a Diet Coke or snacks. Now, he just yells out commands to whichever employee is in earshot.
Quite the come down, from leader of the free world to free loader of the phony world of Palm Beach “society” trying unsuccessfully to grift money from the General Services Administration and doing absolutely nothing about the customary presidential library.
As a private citizen, Trump is far more isolated than he was as president. He makes virtually no public appearances outside of political rallies where he is surrounded by even larger crowds of screaming fans. (Despite declaring his reelection campaign in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom on Nov. 15, he has not emerged from his cocoon for a rally out in the country since then.) He takes no vacations to properties he does not own. He almost never encounters people willing to challenge his behavior — much less true political opponents.
Several people close to Trump said there are only a few people who are willing to deliver bad news left in his orbit, political adviser Susan Wiles chief among them. His circle has shrunken considerably, with many of his longtime allies attempting to avoid dinner invites — and some even weighing roles with other 2024 candidates.
“No one wants to confront him because he can be a beast,” one adviser said. After the dinner with Fuentes and West, who now goes by the name Ye, advisers to Trump were flooded with calls from allies, lawmakers and others questioning the decision and urging him to apologize. Trump received few of them himself, however, people familiar with the matter said.
And has anybody heard any official word of who is Trump’s 2024 campaign manager? Is Steve Bannon making a return engagement? Will they allow him to work remotely from his prison cell, assuming he finally exhausts his appeals and actually serves time?
All we know for sure, is that various aides have left Trump, particularly after the surprise visit by the FBI, and the only guy we know is still around is the Diet Coke valet.
One of the only aides who worked for Trump in the White House and still spends significant time in his presence is Nauta, people close to Trump said. A native of Guam, Nauta enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 2001 and was promoted from the White House mess to serve as the president’s valet not long after Trump took office. In that role, he spent all day in and out of the Oval Office, bringing the president glasses of Diet Coke, fetching his coat and moving documents from room to room — duties not unlike those he performs for Trump now that he is out of office. In Trump’s world, where rivalries are common, Nauta is widely liked and perceived as a genuinely nice guy.
Prosecutors have been seeking to secure cooperation from Nauta in the investigation of classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, people familiar with the case have said. When first questioned by the FBI, they said he denied any knowledge or awareness of sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago. When questioned a second time, however, he told investigators he moved boxes at Trump’s direction after a grand jury subpoena in May was delivered demanding the return of any documents with classified markings. Nauta is one of several potentially key witnesses whose lawyers’ fees are being paid through Trump’s political action committee, Save America. Some experts have said the arrangement could influence Nauta’s testimony.
And where is the babysitter we were told that Trump now has assigned to him, since the Fuentes/Ye debacle? It was reported that a “senior campaign aide” would attend Trump at all times and make sure he didn’t sit down to dinner with any more Nazis or Hitler fan boys. That plan, while it sounded promising at the time, seems to have gone up in smoke.
All anybody knows is that: 1) It’s been over a month since Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2024 and he has done squat by way of campaigning and 2) criminal referrals and/or indictments could be announced as soon as tomorrow from the January 6 Committee.
Sounds like prison will be a relief.
There is a job opening titled Restroom Facilitator. You shake his pecker after urination & change his Depends everytime he gets bad news. The compensation is all the cold hamburgers you can carry home, and the prestige of wiping the ‘president’s’ ass. Ah…to be king.
Mel!Brooks did a much better job.”It’s good to.be the king.”
You noted Trump hasn’t been traveling to any of his other properties. That’s because taxpayers are no longer footing the bill for his travel, and paying the (ridiculously inflated) costs for rooms for his Secret Service detail and the diminished number of aides/hangers-on that would accompany him. Paying the costs for a privet jet out of pocket? No fucking way. Especially when he can’t grift back some of the costs with room rentals & golf-cart fees!
Without a doubt, he would have charged GSA (us) 5 times the amount they’d have to pay for an office NOT at Mango Lago.