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 table, eschewing costume for his standard uniform of oversized suit and blood-red tie — looking, as one wag put it, “like a maître d’ at his own funeral.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that ambitious little weather vane, was spotted deep in conversation with the president, no doubt calculating how many more years of this shit will he have to endure before he just might land in the Oval Office himself.

Meanwhile, outside the gates of this latter-day Babylon, America was having what we might delicately call “a moment.” Air traffic controllers were calling in sick en masse (can one blame them for refusing to guide planes through the sky for free?), federal workers were discovering that food banks have surprisingly long lines, and the SNAP benefits that keep Walmart shoppers in Hot Pockets and hope were about to evaporate like champagne bubbles in the Florida heat.

Gavin Newsom — who never met a crisis he couldn’t Instagram — naturally seized the moment with characteristic sanctimony, posting: “Donald Trump hosted a Great Gatsby party while SNAP benefits were about to disappear for 42 million Americans. He does not give a damn about you.” Points for accuracy, if not originality, Governor Hairgel.

The Art of the Meal (Well those not on SNAP)

But here’s where it gets…well… biblical. Just hours before the Halloween party, two federal judges — those tiresome guardians of constitutional propriety — had the audacity to order Trump to tap into emergency funds to keep the food stamps flowing. The administration’s response was a masterclass in bureaucratic petulance. Kevin Hassett, Trump’s economic adviser and a man who looks like he was personally offended by the existence of poverty, went on television to rage about “liberal judges” forcing them to use emergency funds for, well, an emergency.

Trump himself took to Truth Social (that digital Tower of Babel he built after Twitter showed him the door) to declare: “I do NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT.” This from a man who was, at that very moment, reviewing the dessert options for his Prohibition-themed party. Let’s not forget our president is dealing with his own Dickensonian nightmare, thank you Andrew Matbatt Windsong - whatever you call yourself now. Donald’s future ghost does not see a lot positive.

The Oriental Express

Of course, the Halloween party was merely the grand finale of a week that saw Trump gallivanting across Asia like a cross between Marco Polo and a QVC host. The itinerary was ambitious: Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, with the pièce de résistance being a tête-à-tête with China’s Xi Jinping, whom Trump continues to court with the desperation of a teenage boy with a crush.

The meeting, by all accounts, was a triumph of transactional diplomacy. Trump emerged claiming victory on tariffs (reduced from 57% to 47%, as if these numbers meant anything to anyone beyond the poor souls at the Commerce Department), while Xi presumably got what he always gets from these encounters: confirmation that America’s decline is proceeding on schedule. Between each victory, the world was encouraged by Trump’s soundness and deep contemplation. For example, following that time honored prinicipal, “if your best friend jumped off a bridge would you” Trump announced that the USA will now test nuclear weapons. Then, decided not to. Stability 100%.

In Japan, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi — the nation’s first female PM and clearly nobody’s fool — played Trump like a Stradivarius. She nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize* (one can imagine the committee’s collective eye-roll from here to Oslo) and gifted America 250 cherry blossom trees for the nation’s 250th anniversary. Trump, naturally, was besotted. “The greatest alliance in the world,” he gushed, apparently forgetting he’d said the same thing about his partnership with the MyPillow guy. Don’t be surprised to see “Trump Cherry Trees” going up for sale on his merch website. Apparently they are good investment. Limited number of trees for sale - rare. About 250 I think.

The Shutdown Serenade

Back in Washington, the government shutdown has taken on the quality of a C-SPAN broadcast — endless, absurd, and utterly devoid of resolution. The Senate keeps holding votes that fail along party lines with the reliability of a Swiss watch. The House hasn’t bothered to show up for six weeks, having apparently decided that governance is optional when there’s fundraising to be done. Who is working? Marjorie Taylor Greene. I wonder if she’s texting with Liz Cheney yet?

The proximate cause of this particular catastrophe? Democrats want to extend healthcare subsidies; Republicans want to slash spending until the federal government is small enough to, as Grover Norquist once put it, drown in a bathtub. Neither side appears to have noticed that the bathtub is currently occupied by 42 million Americans trying not to starve.

Always terrifying - JD Vance.

Vice President J.D. Vance — that literary ventriloquist’s dummy who somehow parlayed a mediocre memoir into the Naval Observatory — tried to lighten the mood with a Halloween video featuring himself in a curly wig. “Remember to say thank you while you trick or treat,” he chirped, apparently unaware that millions of American children wouldn’t be getting any treats this year unless you count government cheese as candy.

But then again, the entire shutdown is a ruse. I never was much of a conspiracy theorist, but why hasn’t Speaker Mike sworn in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona? Cuz the Orange God of all that is unholy knows that his name is in the Epstein files.

Trump and his pals are chilled to the bone after Charles toss his brother from the palace and all things royal. If Jeff could take down Lilibet’s fav - Trump’s vulnerable- he knows it.

The Last Tango

What makes this whole tragic opera particularly galling is that it’s so utterly predictable. Trump has always possessed an almost supernatural ability to embody the very worst stereotypes about American wealth and power. He’s not just indifferent to suffering; he’s aesthetically offended by it. The poor, to Trump, are like a bad paint job at Mar-a-Lago — something to be covered up, preferably with gold leaf.

The Great Gatsby party, with its specific theme and timing, feels less like mere insensitivity and more like a message. It’s as if Trump read Fitzgerald’s novel (unlikely) or at least had someone explain it to him (slightly more plausible) and decided that Jay Gatsby was the hero, not the cautionary tale.

As I write this, federal workers are entering their second month without pay, families are rationing their last food supplies, and somewhere in Palm Beach, maintenance staff are sweeping up confetti and empty champagne bottles from what everyone agrees was “a fabulous party.”

The judge’s orders may eventually get those SNAP benefits flowing again — probably in dribs and drabs, just enough to keep the pitchforks at bay. Trump will claim victory over China, Democrats will continue their kabuki theater of resistance, and the shutdown will either end with a whimper or continue until something actually breaks.

But perhaps the most revealing moment of Trump’s week wasn’t the party, or the Asia tour, or even his Truth Social protestations about feeding the hungry. No, it came in a seemingly innocuous post on Friday afternoon, just before he departed for Mar-a-Lago and his costumed revelry.

“I renovated the Lincoln Bathroom in the White House,” he announced to his followers, with the pride of a suburban dad showing off his man cave. “It was renovated in the 1940s in an art deco green tile style, which was totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era. I did it in black and white polished Statuary marble. This was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there.”

There it is. The perfect Trump epitaph, delivered by the man himself. While America starves, while the government crumbles, while air traffic controllers work without pay and children wonder where their next meal will come from, the President of the United States wants you to know he fixed a bathroom. Not just any bathroom, mind you, but Lincoln’s bathroom — that famous rail-splitter who definitely spent his presidency worrying about whether his powder room had period-appropriate marble. And the bathroom worked just fine.

Forty-two million Americans can’t afford food, but thank God — thank God! — the Lincoln Bathroom no longer offends with its art deco tiles. History will surely remember Donald J. Trump not as the president who let children go hungry during the longest shutdown in American history, but as the visionary who finally, finally, gave a shit about where people take one.

Let them eat urinal cakes.

Until next time, friends.

— J.D.P.

* I am convinced that Trump this the Nobel Prize has a golden ticket - one he can use to get into Heaven.

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