dispatch from the swamp
Trump drained 'the swamp' to his own properties in Florida and Washington, The New York Times details
President Trump has said he never liked his pledge to "drain the swamp," but his fans did so he kept it in his stable of three-word chants. Once elected, though. "Trump did not merely fail to end Washington's insider culture of lobbying and favor-seeking," The New York Times reports. "He reinvented it, turning his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway’s new back rooms, where public and private business mix and special interests reign," building "a system of direct presidential influence-peddling unrivaled in modern American politics."
To map Trump's own swamp, centered at his hotel in Washington, D.C., and Doral and Mar-a-Lago clubs in Florida, the Times pored over the tax information it has obtained, reviewed hundreds of social media posts by patrons of his properties, and interviewed nearly 250 business executives, lobbyists, and club members.
The Times investigative team uncovered more than 200 companies, foreign governments, and special interest groups giving money to Trump's properties and reaping benefits from his administration, including 60 customers with business before the government spending $12 million at his family businesses in 2017 and 2018. The Times provided an overview:
Patrons at the properties ranged widely: foreign politicians and Florida sugar barons, a Chinese billionaire and a Serbian prince, clean-energy enthusiasts and their adversaries in the petroleum industry, avowed small-government activists and contractors seeking billions from ever-fattening federal budgets. Mr. Trump’s administration delivered them funding and laws and land. He handed them appointments to task forces and ambassadorships, victories as weighty as a presidential directive and as ephemeral as a presidential tweet. [The New York Times]
White House spokesman Judd Deere told the Times that Trump has "turned over-day-to-day responsibilities" to sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., and claimed Trump "kept his promise every day to the American people to fight for them, drain the swam, and always put America first."
The people who paid to interact with Trump at his properties did not always get what they wanted, the Times reports, but Trump's heavily indebted family business always got paid, thanks to this "lucrative new revenue stream: people who wanted something from the president." Read the extensive details at The New York Times.