This Week and Next: All That Glitters

Let Them Eat Cake-Pops: Trump’s Marie Antoinette Moment at Mar-a-Lago

Even by the gold-plated standards of Trumpian excess, this week delivered a tableau so perfectly, grotesquely symbolic that Leona Helmsley would have rejected it as too on-the-nose. The 45th and 47th President of these United States, hosting a Great Gatsby bacchanal at his Palm Beach Xanadu while 42 million Americans prepared to have their food stamps yanked away like so many canapés from a waiter’s tray.

The party invitation, according to the Internet (yes that font of truth) bore the tagline “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody.” CAN Not make this up. The irony was apparently lost on the Mar-a-Lago set, who arrived in their rental Rolls-Royces dressed as bootleggers and jazz babies, ready to Charleston their way through the 31st day of a government shutdown that has brought the republic to its knees.

The Gilded Cage

As millions of Americans prepare for a week of no SNAP benefits, rising food prices and no end in site to the government shutdown, Trump held court at his usual banquet tabl…