He didn’t like the ones at Camp David either ??♀️ https://t.co/uHrkSJBYxt
— Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) December 29, 2020
After having the White House staff (and all the ‘most important’ journalists & pundits) at his beck & phone call… somehow getting schmoozed by a bunch of retired car dealership owners just isn’t as sweet. Strong end-of-the-empire vibes here — Trump angered by Mar-a-Lago renovations, sources say:
His mood darkened as soon as he walked into his members-only club Mar-a-Lago, three days before Christmas, according to multiple sources. The changes to his private quarters, many of which were overseen by his wife, first lady Melania Trump, were not to President Donald Trump’s liking, and he was mad about it, according to a source familiar with the President’s response.
Several weeks in the works, the renovations, undertaken to make the approximately 3,000-square-foot space feel larger and updated in preparation for the Trumps post-White House life, didn’t appeal to Trump’s aesthetics, according to his reaction. Trump was also displeased with other renovations at the property, the source said, not just in the living space…
If the kick-off to his last Florida sojourn as President was rough, the days that followed would be much of the same, with Trump appearing “moody,” according to the source at the club, spending more time than usual behind closed doors and not mingling and conversing as much as he normally does with club members and senior White House staff, many of whom have in the last few years joined him there…
Though he has largely publicly ignored the ravages of Covid-19 on the country, commenting little in recent weeks and seemingly taking a backseat approach as hundreds of thousands of Americans become infected each day, Trump hasn’t been able to avoid the coronavirus’ impact at his beloved sanctuary of Mar-a-Lago…
A Palm Beach winter regular said they’ve heard about the lack of parties, events and fundraisers in the wealthy enclave, and the dinnertime ritual of table-hopping, going from table to table to exchange air kisses and hellos has all but disappeared. The mask-wearing mandate for businesses, establishments, public spaces and restaurants in Palm Beach was extended in Palm Beach County until January 20 and includes Mar-a-Lago, though compliance there has been hit-or-miss at best.
The Mar-a-Lago “scene,” as it were, consists largely of Trump holding court when he is in residence. Club members and their guests like to marvel at stumbling upon the President of the United States at the buffet or a party in the ballroom. At a wedding Monday night at Mar-a-Lago, Trump made a surprise appearance, entering to wave hello and congratulate the bride and groom, according to someone present at the event.
The fabled Mar-a-Lago black-tie New Year’s Eve party, which Trump and his family attend each year and which guests pay thousands per ticket, is still slated to take place Thursday night, said a member of Mar-a-Lago, who has heard buzz that at least 500 reservations have already been confirmed. What is unclear is whether attendees will adhere to coronavirus mitigation guidelines. At a gala earlier this month for Turning Point USA, the conservative student group, partygoers flouted mask and social distancing requirements, photos from the event showed hundreds in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom.
The President has also been relegated to a smaller batch of familiar faces to entertain and occupy his time during this Florida trip. There are no foreign leaders to host, as has often been the case during his presidency, and most of the West Wing senior staff who usually join the trip are not there.
On Sunday, Trump did not dine out with the first lady, and instead ate dinner at a table with his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and Trump Jr.’s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, according to one witness, who said Trump had a pop-by at his table from Roger Stone, one of his longtime cronies who the President had pardoned less than a week prior. Stone entered the club wearing a “Trump 2020” face mask…
Break out a whole symphony of nano-violins for this sad, sad sack of spite and insecurity.
rikyrah
Just pathetic?
But, so him?
rikyrah
Who will be renewing their membership at any of his clubs?
Achrachno
I see that a newly elected Rep.congressman from Louisiana, just 41 y.o., has died of Covid. I have a feeling that won’t get Trump to take this pandemic seriously either. He can’t be gone soon enough.
Achrachno
@rikyrah: Not me!
CaseyL
So Wee Hands doesn’t like the changes Melania made?
I wonder if she decided, since it’s impossible to please him, “Fuck it. I’ll do what pleases me.”
And I wonder how many White House artifacts, antiques, pieces of furniture, and whatnot have been relocated to Mar A Lago, never to return.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
If there’s one bit of justice in this whole last, sorry four years, it’s that the fuckface is just miserable. He’s always miserable, he always has been miserable, and he’ll always be miserable. The poor fuck doesn’t know how to be happy. It’s justice, in its own small way.
The Oracle of Solace
“Trump’s aesthetics”—Is that a thing?
mrmoshpotato
Sounds like a Soviet shitpile mobster manbaby needs his binky (Heeeeeeeyyyyyy!!!!! Kids!) and a bottle right away.
Achrachno
@CaseyL: Isn’t theft still a felony? No immunity beginning 3 weeks from now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@CaseyL:
I wonder if there’s a clause in that renegotiated pre-nup about a loss in 2020
Kent
@Achrachno: What is the process for replacing a congressman? As far as I know, they don’t to replacement appointments like for Senators. They just hold a special election and the seat stays empty until then.
Chetan Murthy
@Achrachno:
Gotta believe they take an inventory at each change of regime.
ant
500 people at a new years party?
How many people is he going to kill?
Was Luke Letlow at the White House Christmas party on the 12?
Our president is a Psychopath and a cold blooded killer. That is not an exaggeration, nor is it hyperbole.
JanieM
@rikyrah:
Well, out of the measly 74 mil who voted for him, there are probably one or two…or five…or thousands…
Achrachno
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Not miserable enough yet. We can do better putting the fear of “God” into him, and future republicans.
Kent
Pretty much my definition of life in Hell.
Suzanne
I seem to recall reading very early in the Administration that Trump and Melania disagreed about the furnishings she picked out then, too. Apparently she selected more modern pieces from the White House collection, whereas Trump goes for that Versailles-by-way-of-Claire’s-Boutique look.
CaseyL
@Achrachno: It damned well should be. He’s stealing American artifacts, history, and gifts from foreign dignitaries that were made to the country, not to whoever happened to be living there at the time.
prostratedragon
@Kent: “Check your eyelids, gentlemen.”
Poe Larity
I guess Melania won’t be working on the Presidential Library. Still wondering if it will have a casino.
mrmoshpotato
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): The most hilarious part about this whole shitshow is his whining to a reporter a few months back about how life was better before being “elected.”
Just occurred to me – I want a podcast where Hillary deconstructs Dump’s bastard presidency loser action by loser action.
Suzanne
@rikyrah: I can’t imagine ever spending money that one could spend on other things on a membership to a Trump club. I would be embarrassed if anyone saw me. Lord. How humiliating.
Sm*t Cl*de
@The Oracle of Solace:
https://files1.comics.org//img/gcd/covers_by_id/1054/w400/1054006.jpg?8799787281187784398
mrmoshpotato
@The Oracle of Solace:
Yes – disgusting, gaudy and Soviet.
counterfactual
@Kent: Like everything, varies by state. I just looked up Louisiana, there the seat is vacant until a special elections. There’s probably going to be one in March since a Dem congressman is joining the Biden administration.
Yutsano
Saw Dick Cheney trending on Twitter. I had the faintest glimmer of hope…
No he’s not dead. He’s being used to make fun of Rafael. STOP GETTING MY HOPES UP PEOPLE!!!
Kent
OMG….You all need to watch the new Netflix movie “Death to 2020”
Trust me. Funniest thing I have seen in a long time.
dmsilev
@Yutsano: Dick Cheney has been undead since roughly 1985.
mrmoshpotato
@Yutsano:
Come on – “Ted.”
SFAW
@Suzanne:
Outstanding.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: Cheney has the heart of a dead man.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Uday is dating a stripper 10 years his senior. Talk about having issues.
Steeplejack
@Sm*t Cl*de:
Bad link. Fixed.
Mary G
It’s puzzling me. Mel’s interior decorator, Tham Kannalikham, also did the initial changes at the White House in 2017. Her website has a password, her Instagram is private, and I can’t find a picture of any single project she’s ever done. Plenty of pictures of her at minor charity balls and decorating conferences, but not ever with a named client, and like Mel, no interviews or interiors in various magazine devoted to design. Architectural Digest did some digging
Barf.
Who doesn’t use free advertising for their services? There’s got to be a grift going. Maybe some of the sweet inauguration money got laundered through her.
SFAW
@Steeplejack:
Not in this plane of existence, it ain’t
ETA: I guess the “Not Found” could be an editorial comment on Trump’s “taste.” But if that wasn’t the intent …
Steeplejack
Redacted.
JanieM
@Steeplejack: The link still doesn’t work.
Suzanne
@Mary G:
As one does.
SFAW
@Steeplejack:
I get a 404 when when I click on the link.
I’m running XP (on the particular system I’m using at the moment), so I guess there’s a possibility that it would give a 404 where Win 7 or 10 would display an actual JPG. But I would think an XP-incompatibility would manifest itself in some way other than a 404, as in: “unable to display” (or some such), rather than a Not Found. But I’m a hardware guy, not a softhead, so what do I know?
ETA: Hence the “Trump’s taste = Not Found”
Steeplejack
@JanieM:
This is the link. It works for me.
https://files1.comics.org/img/gcd/covers_by_id/1054/w400/1054006.jpg?8799787281187784398
It goes to the cover of the Doonesbury book Give Those Nymphs Some Hooters!
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Mary G:
a zebra hide desk? sounds like Idi Amin’s decor
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: “I mean it left these areas utterly inhospitable, even to Australians.”
West of the Rockies
@Achrachno:
Did he attend a Trump rally?
Chetan Murthy
@Steeplejack: FWIW, I still get 404. Chromebook, updated recently.
JanieM
@Steeplejack: It doesn’t work for me. But this one does. (I.e. with the question mark and everything after it deleted. Otherwise I get a 404.)
Chetan Murthy
@JanieM: How amusing. I -added- a question-mark to the of your URL — and that worked.
SFAW
@JanieM:
FYI, your link gives me a 404 as well. [Chrome on an Intel/XP platform]
SFAW
@Chetan Murthy:
Thanks, your fix worked when I tried it as well.
ETA: For both JanieM’s and Steep’s links, by the way
Suzanne
@Mary G:
In all seriousness, depending on the clients she works for, many of her projects may be confidential. Designers like that are working on a referral basis, so I don’t necessarily think it’s weird not to have Insta or whatever. But I would think that at least one project would make the trade press.
JanieM
Interesting. (Maybe for WaterGirl?)
If I click Steeplejack’s link in comment #40 I get a 404.
If I right click and copy the link address, then paste it into the address bar, it works.
Just for the record.
That’s never happened with any other link I’ve clicked from here.
JanieM
@SFAW: Heh. It worked in the comment box.
But I’m getting the same behavior in both Chrome and Firefox. (Both of which have ad blockers installed. Firefox also has scripts blocked for the most part. But I have never seen this behavior in BJ links or any others. Strange.)
P.S. If I copy and paste the link, it works. Then if I come back to this thread and click one of the links, it also now works. It’s like it has to be primed or something.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: This is great!
Major Major Major Major
thank god I’ll never have to think about these people again because the media will be focusing on Biden’s suits or whatever, soon enough.
Chetan Murthy
@JanieM: Bingo!
@JanieM: I took a cue from your mention of adblockers, and just clicked on the link in your comment, but opening an incognito window, and it worked. No need to modify the URL. It was the adblocker! Ha!
SFAW
@Suzanne:
I heard she did some work in the Tacoma area awhile back.
Bill Arnold
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
The Justice part is that he’ll be more miserable in the future.
Ruckus
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
Do you think that if you were anywhere near as shitty as trump is, would you ever be happy or even just not pissed off? He wants to be super rich, except he’s not smart enough to manage to do that, and while he manages to have a following, would you want any of the people who follow him as even just very occasional interactions? He expects everyone to basically be willing to treat him like a king, and he gives them zero reason to do so. He lies, cheats, is incapable of, really anything positive. His followers look to him because he projects the same hate as them and has almost no filter. He is a worthless human being, and while he might know that, he is incapable of admitting it, probably even to himself.
Does anyone think he’s got any redeeming social, personal, mental, financial value? I don’t. I’ve known shitty people in my life and none of them had 1% of the crappy, negative human values that trump has.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
As rikyrah sometimes says: No lie told.
SFAW
@Chetan Murthy:
The incog window thing also worked A-OK for me.
JanieM
@SFAW: LOL. I remember being shown that video in freshman physics class. What amazed me almost as much as the phenomenon itself is that the bridge held together for as long as it did.
Ruckus
@Bill Arnold:
No, the justice would be if he actually had to admit all the miserable in his life is all his fault. That or he actually gets COVID and has to be intubated and see what it’s like being all the people he hates. It would be a hat trick if both of those happened. I’ll give points to anyone who can figure out something worse for him and of course jail time for everything he can be convicted of doesn’t count – thats a given. Poor jailers.
Origuy
US Constitution, Article I, Section 2:
When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.
Replacement of a Senator varies from state to state. From Amendment XVII:
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
Ascap_scab
Melanoma will be filing for divorce as soon as Cheetolini is in exile. That prenup won’t mean shit.
JanieM
@Ruckus: Worse, perhaps, would be if no one ever paid the slightest bit of attention to him ever again, and he knew it.
ETA along with jail time, naturally.
Dahlia
@Ruckus: A brain stem stroke resulting in locked in syndrome would be a challenge for Trump’s coping skills but then again it would be a challenge for anyone. The fact that Jean Dominique Bauby was able to write (dictate by blinking) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly after suffering such a stroke verges on miraculous. I doubt Trump would be as creative.
Chetan Murthy
@Dahlia: Staaaahp, you’re gettin’ me excited.
Mary G
@Suzanne: I assume Uday shot it, and kept the tail.
Mary G
Mary G
JoyceH
I can’t believe anyone thought that Trump would like a decor he hadn’t chosen himself. The man is obsessed with fabric swatches. Heck, they should have put the question of the reno of his Mar a Lago quarters to him immediately after the election. He would have played obsessively with fabric swatches instead of filing all these dang lawsuits.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@CaseyL:
None, the White House is a museum, it’s collection is carefully cataloged. If anything is missing, the Government will take it back.
Kent
@mrmoshpotato:
“I mean “pandemic” isn’t even an English word”
“Oh, it is? Well…only if you say it in English”
Ruckus
@Dahlia:
I’m voting this most understated sentence of the decade. And this is just the first year. But nothing foreseeable is going to beat that.
Ruckus
@Mary G:
You think that putz has even 1% of the necessary brain function to even see the connection, let alone learn anything positive?
Jinchi
What’s left out of the reports is that Melania decorated Mar-a-Lago with portraits of her hugging the Obamas and looking lovingly at Justin Trudeau.
Probably.
Achrachno
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Trump’s been destroying records since he arrived. Early on I remember him chewing up some notes someone had written, and shredding notes taken by some official stenographers. He is secretive, because he wants no records of his criminal activity. If he’s stolen things, he’ll also have detailed some flunky to destroy the records that those things ever existed.
Now of course, he’s incompetent too, so …
Kent
He’s been destroying paper copies of records. They don’t use manual typewriters to produce them. Every briefing paper and decision memo produced for his eyes has no doubt gone through multiple levels of review and has been emailed around and is stored on multiple servers that are backed up daily to multiple secure locations. It’s all still there.
What doesn’t exist are things like snap chat and WhatsApp messages on personal phones between Jared and MBS and that sort of thing. Which they did a LOT of at this White House. But any of that sort of thing has no permanence in policy if it was never written down. It is as it if never happened. So Biden is going to have a lot of clean slate policy-wise to the extent that the Trump folks took short cuts.
Origuy
There’s a person whose title is Curator of the White House. She’s the person in charge of keeping track of the collection. Jackie Kennedy was the person responsible for creating the office and making the White House designated a museum.
Lydia Tederick is the current Curator. Although she was appointed by Trump in 2017, she’s been with the White House since 1979. She probably knows every spoon and saucer in the place.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: Thanks again. I just finished it. I hope outtakes are released. They must’ve had a ball making something so ridiculous.
TS (the original)
@JanieM:
And I hope every last sycophant who did pay him attention – lives to regret it.
Mary G
@Mary G: I just enjoy seeing Kevin Kruse making Republicans look stupid, with receipts. He’s had a years-long feud with Dinesh D’Souza, and winning so much I wonder Dinesh even shows his face in public.
Kent
@mrmoshpotato: Samuel L Jackson and Hugh Grant were a riot. As was Tracy Ullman playing the Queen and Lisa Kudrow playing the blonde GOP woman.
NotMax
@Origuy
Even the once seen can never be unseen oyster plates from the Hayes china service.
;)
burnspbesq
If he doesn’t like the new-and-improved Mar-a-Lago, wait’ll he gets a look at FCI Otisville.
Origuy
@NotMax: Oh… My…. God….
Amir Khalid
@Mary G:
Dinesh D’Souza spends a lot of time getting his ass handed to him by real scholars and thinkers. Somehow, none of it has led him to rethink his position on anything.
JoyceH
Huh. Saw an article a few days ago about how the Hotel Harrington in downtown DC had been dismayed to find itself becoming an unofficial Proud Boys hangout during those pro-Trump protests (that turned violent) a couple weeks ago. Now I’m seeing that the hotel has decided that Jan 6, when the EC votes are verified and the Trump hooligans will be back in town, it’s just going to be closed. Probably a smart move.
prostratedragon
I wonder what, if anything, the Bidens will do about the White House Chief Usher. Normally this person has long tenure from one President to another; there have been only 11 Chief Ushers since 1897, serving 20 or 21 Presidents. The previous Chief Usher, Angella Reid, was hired by the Obamas. She was dismissed by the Trumps in 2017 and replaced by Timothy Harleth (sic on the link). It would certainly be a further erosion of the previous custom if the Bidens replaced him early on, but maybe custom isn’t everything.
John S.
The best part about this story is that Trump cannot actually live at Mar-a-Lago:
And of course since Trump never honors his agreements, the city of Palm Beach is prepared to take action:
Robert Sneddon
News overnight from the UK — the Oxford/AstraZeneca adenovirus vaccine has been approved for use here. First vaccinations with this will start on January 4th.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55280671
It’s a more conventional vaccine being based on an existing virus. it doesn’t require very low temperature transport and storage. It can be deployed as a single-dose treatment with lower efficacy or as a double-dose treatment but without the time constraints with the second injection occuring up to 12 weeks after the first.
Chris T.
Yes, sort of: it’s a thing amongst dictators in general. This is a politico link but it is from quite a while ago and talks about how Trump likes “dictator chic”: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/trump-style-dictator-autocrats-design-214877
bjacques
@Chris T. Pablo Escobar’s place looked a bit like that. And a lot of gangsters all the way down tried to decorate like drug lords on a drug viscount’s budget.
This about Mar-4-Loko reminds me of a meme…The Trump Presidency:
How it started:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4dbBur_bSUE
How it’s going:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JrokMa1QlKo
Anne Laurie
D’Souza makes a very nice living as the RW media equivalent of a carnival geek. His job is to make outrageous, dishonest statements about ‘history’ that can be fed into the puke funnel. The fact that honest scholars have to waste time pigbladdering his lies are icing on the cake, for him and for his paymasters — every Dinesh, you ignorant bigot statement fuels their contention that us Lie-brals are just nasty meanies who are the Real Racists, cuz after all that D’Souza guy is, y’know…
Which doesn’t mean people like Kevin Kruse are wasting their time; someone has to stand up for reality. But every foray does confirm my theory that D’Souza is the RWNJ equivalent of that geeky third-grader who was a three-day ‘celebrity’ on the school playground after swallowing a live bug — he can’t find a more dignified method of getting attention than by bursting into other peoples’ conversations and demanding Wanna see me eat another bug?
Booger
@Mary G: Whew! I thought for a second you meant the stripper!
evodevo
@JanieM: yeah, I did too…I think it was on the unit on elasticity maybe…
pluky
@Kent: You don’t think the NSA and other governments’ security agencies haven’t figured out how to eavesdrop on and log conversations on such apps?
Uncle Cosmo
@JanieM: Same here. (Farfawks latest, Win 7.)
trnc
For us, yeah, but for him a bunch of assholes screaming about how he was robbed is better than any harp and halo.
VOR
Trump is always angry about something. Aides always failed him. He disagrees with their decisions. Yes, he believes he has impeccable taste and personally picks details such as the marble counters on Trump Shuttle planes.
I think this is the narcissism. He has to have the final word and has to be the authority.
We’ll never see articles talking about how Trump was pleased with the initiative taken by aides and congratulated them.
jonas
@VOR: The Trump White House sure seems like it was a soul-sucking hellhole of a place to work. The only people who still put up with it are themselves deeply damaged, terrible human beings who reflect Trump’s own awfulness back at him. Hence his continual frustration and tantrums.
jonas
I forgot where I saw it, but someone early on in his term supposedly claimed that Trump had a habit of tearing up memos or notes he didn’t want anyone to see and tossing them in the trash and aides would have to later discretely retrieve them and try to tape them back together or something to comply with record preservation rules. No idea if that was true or not; it seems more likely that Trump was too stupid to realize that, like you said, anything that reached his desk had been passed through multiple email servers and under numerous eyes and tearing it up made absolutely no difference.
I’d be interested in knowing what stuff he and his lawyers have been storing on ultrasecure, top secret NSC servers so as to make it inaccessible to Congress or the special counsel. I trust Biden’s people will be looking into that asap and that you can’t just hit delete and erase files w/o creating a trail.
jonas
Yep. His whole schtick relies on exploiting the deeply held belief among evangelicals that if secular liberals are attacking you, you must be doing something right.
PaulWartenberg
As John Cole often noted, donald trump is not happy about ANYTHING. Even when he gets his way, he’s not enjoying the moment, other than when he is being openly sadistic towards those he treats as his inferiors.
trump’s entire history is one long lawyer-backed tantrum, undercutting every contractor’s efforts in order to avoid paying for their services, to where I get the feeling he habitually hates changes to his decor out of spite.
J R in WV
@Kent:
I would bet a lot of scratch that our secret squirrel agencies have copies of every conversation Jared had with anyone from his home or the White House no matter what commercial devices or software encoding Jared used to attempt to conspire against America in secret. Further, the Mossad probably has copies of Mohammed bone Saw’s conversations with anyone conducted via cell phones regardless of the commercial secrecy devices or software used in the attempt.
Now, calls made with dedicated copper land lines may be an exception to this, but I’ll bet those guys all want to use their high-end cell phones because a wired up phone is so old fashioned to them. Plus, we tapped into Russian cable traffic during the cold war, I’ll bet cable traffic has been an open book to the NSA and similar agencies for years.
We’ll see when the indictments for espionage and leaking official secrets rain down on the whole trump group in the coming years…
PaulWartenberg
@bjacques: the crassly wealthy have no other ways of expressing their crassness other than hideous architecture and gaudy – often gold-plated – decor.
J R in WV
@prostratedragon:
The current Chief Usher was formerly a manager at a Trump hotel property, hired to replace a fired black woman, the first female chief usher appointed by President Obama. So I don’t think Biden will keep Mr Harleth on for very long. I surely wouldn’t.
The Oracle of Solace
@Chris T.: This is an interesting read. Thanks for pointing it out!