The Vanishing Pretense
I drove today past what was once the Trump International Hotel, and I felt a flicker of nostalgia for the quiet days of the first Trump term.
How quaint our outrage seems now.
We were scandalized that a sitting president operated a luxury hotel a short stroll from the White House; that courtiers could purchase favor by purchasing suites; that the republic had been reduced to an emporium of ballrooms and bluster. And of course there were the hats, those dreadful hats, and the merchandised sloganeering unbecoming of any president with so much as a passing acquaintance with dignity.
Yet, in retrospect, at least he was trying to run a business. Pathetic, yes—but a recognizable corruption, almost traditional in its seediness.
Trump II dispenses even with the pretense.
Foreign leaders now remark that meetings with Trump’s envoys turn immediately—not eventually—to discussions of business arrangements, licensing opportunities, construction projects, and assorted gewgaws meant to flatter the presidential vanity. National interests scarcely make the agenda.
And the trophies accumulate. The man returns from abroad with airplanes, prizes, and every bauble short of a duchy. Instead of a hotel, we now hear whispers of the Kennedy Center adopting the Trump brand, and of some nouveau Arch de Trump rising impertinently near the Lincoln Memorial. One almost expects Mount Rushmore to sprout a mezzanine.
And a Trump Hotel beats a White House ballroom.
Perhaps the pretense of governing made all the difference the first time.
Perhaps the presence of a few truth-tellers—lonely but audible—kept the more baroque impulses in check. Perhaps the sense of political immortality now afflicting the Oval Office has dissolved whatever thin inhibitions once existed. Or perhaps this is simply what a lame-duck autocrat looks like when he abandons the choreography.
Whatever the cause, Trump I and Trump II are creatures of different species.
And the country, finally, appears to know it. Independents have fled; Democrats were never fooled; and even a sliver of Republicans seem to recognize that the man is no longer pretending to take his duties seriously—if he ever did.
If there is a hope tucked inside this dark carnival, it is that the disillusionment is spreading fast enough that 2026 may yet bring a repudiation so sweeping that it restores Congress, and the constitutional balance itself, to hands that remember what public service is.