Trump Threatens to Destroy Another Priceless American Landmark

It seems that bulldozing the White House wasn’t enough for Donald Trump.

The builder in chief declared his intention Wednesday to “fix” the 100-year-old Reflecting Pool on the National Mall in Washington. Fix what, exactly? Your guess is as good as ours.

“Study it hard because you won’t be seeing this Biden filth and incompetence much longer!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

This is just the latest ridiculous renovation project that has pulled Trump attention away from, well, actually governing.

Trump is reportedly battling with his handpicked architect, who has warned that the new $300 million ballroom will dwarf the White House. In October, the president had completely razed the White House’s East Wing after promising just months earlier that his ballroom would not touch the existing structure. Trump plowed forward without prerequisite congressional approval, having conveniently begun demolition during the government shutdown.

It’s still unlikely that Trump plans to seek permission before making any changes to the Reflecting Pool. Last month, Trump fired all six members of the Commission on Fine Arts, which is charged with advising the federal government on the art, design, and architectural development of Washington. An official said the members would be replaced by those who were “more aligned with President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies,” but a month later, the seats still remain empty.

At the same time, Trump has redone the Oval Office in the gaudy gold style of Mar-a-Lago, added stupid signs and white marble bathrooms to the White House, paved over the Rose Garden, and even pitched an “Arc de Trump” monument.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is sick and tired of hearing her former MAGA allies complain about her early retirement.

The Georgia lawmaker shocked her constituents just as much as the American public last week when she announced that she will be exiting her post early, capping a tumultuous tenure in Congress by January 5.

The news came on the heels of a fierce battle between Greene and her political idol, Donald Trump, over the release of the Epstein files. Greene fought vehemently to make the documents public, eventually splitting with the president as he tried to convince Republican lawmakers to vote against the effort.

Greene may be entirely washing her hands of the conservative ecosphere. Responding Wednesday to criticisms by her ex-allies over her decision to leave early, rather than at least complete her current term, Greene asked on X if she hadn’t “suffered enough” while they “post all day behind a screen.”

“Do I have to stay until I’m assassinated like our friend Charlie Kirk. Will that be good enough for you then?” Greene wrote. “Shit posting on the internet all day isn’t fighting.

“Get off YOUR ass and run for Congress,” she continued. “I fought harder than anyone in the real arena, not social media. Put down your little pebbles and put your money where your mouth is.”

But right-wing influencers weren’t moved.

“This is pathetic,” responded Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and Hitler fan.

Greene, who won her district in 2020 without the president’s endorsement, has publicly broken with Trump several times since his inauguration in January. She has differed from her “favorite president” on issues ranging from artificial intelligence to the government shutdown, was one of the few Republicans to describe Israel’s actions in Palestine as a “genocide,” and also has sparred with the White House over its handling of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Donald Trump has already spent $70 million of taxpayer money on golfing in less than a year as president. If this pace keeps up, he will spend $300 million playing golf by the time his second term ends. 

HuffPost reports that the president on Wednesday made his sixteenth trip this year to his Mar-a-Lago estate and went golfing. Each trip carries a $3.4 million bill in travel and security costs. If Trump decides to go to Mar-a-Lago twice more before the end of the year, he will have spent a total of $75 million on golf, which, repeated each of the following three years, would result in $300 million spent on the trips.

That’s nearly double the $151.5 million in tax dollars Trump spent golfing in his first term as president. Trump spent a third of 2017, his first year as president, hanging out at his private clubs. This time, Trump has also made nine trips to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, spending $1.1 million on each trip. He also went to Aberdeen, Scotland, in July to promote a new golf course at his resort there, spending close to $10 million on the trip.  

The security costs Trump incurs on his Florida trips can get pretty high, with machine gun–mounted patrol boats manning the nearby Intracoastal Waterway and the Coast Guard patrolling in the vicinity in the Atlantic Ocean. Using Air Force One costs $273,063 per hour to fly to Palm Beach International Airport, meaning that one four-hour round trip to Mar-a-Lago costs the taxpayer $1.1 million. 

In 2016, before Trump was elected, he mocked President Obama’s work ethic, claiming that he was “worse than Carter” for how often he golfed. In the end, Obama only spent $85 million of taxpayer dollars in his eight years as president on golf. 

Meanwhile, Trump has not only eclipsed that in his nearly five years as president, he’s shaped his presidency around golf. He has promoted his golf business on the White House social platform and even decided to deploy the National Guard in Washington, D.C., because he hated seeing homeless people on his way to play golf. 

Last month, Trump took dirt from his White House demolition and sent it to a golf course he’s taking over in Washington. It’s a fitting act for his presidency: taking something from the taxpayer and putting it toward playing an expensive game that he appears to cheat at. 

President Trump has finally released the names of 46 wealthy donors who bankrolled his transition into office. The list predictably consists of billionaires, lobbyists, and people Trump appointed into his Cabinet.

The donors raised just over $14 million, although the Trump administration didn’t clarify who donated what.

“President Trump greatly appreciates his supporters and donors; however, unlike politicians of the past, he is not bought by anyone and does what’s in the best interest of the country,” Trump transition spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez told The New York Times. “Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

That statement is dubious, at best.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff—all of whom are at least millionaires (McMahon and Lutnick are billionaires)—are listed as donors. So are Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodard Jr. and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Dominick Gerace II.

Billionaire businessmen Jeff Yass and Paul Singer are also listed.

This list was delayed because the Trump transition team refused to sign the General Services Administration agreement requiring them to disclose the names of their donors and the amounts donated within 30 days of the inauguration.

Here are the donors:

Linda McMahon

Howard Lutnick

Robert Johnson

Suzanne Johnson

Marlene Ricketts

Robert Bishop

Samantha George

Stephen Plaster

Adam Clampitt

Jeff Yass

Paul Singer

Steve Witkoff

Robert Bigelow

Stanley Woodward

Gene Ventura

Andrew Cuff

Elias Levy

Jeff Littlejohn

Stephen Dewey

Robert Turley

James Tuell

Michael Desmond

Susan Silverie

Jonathan Slemrod

Thomas Schiavone

Marcel Kaminstein

Conor Sheehey

Wade Eyerly

Robert Foran

Kenneth Bridger Roy

Dominick Gerace

Kameel Ali

Matthew Iager

Robert Newton

Anita Winsor

Jeremy Isenberg

Scott Pillath

Harry Jackson

Douglas deWysocki

Jesus Cuartas

Thomas Griffy

Frederick Wilson

Charles Mccarthy

Hector Wong

Brigette Frantz

Catalina Lamontain

It looks like Donald Trump and Alina Habba won’t be getting out of that pesky nearly $1 million fine for filing a particularly petty lawsuit against the president’s political foes.

In a 36-page ruling Wednesday, an Atlanta-based federal appeals court panel unanimously affirmed that Trump and his lawyer had committed “sanctionable conduct” in filing a “frivolous” lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey.

“Many of Trump’s and Habba’s legal arguments were indeed frivolous,” wrote Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge William Pryor Jr., meaning that the claims were fictitious and likely intended to harass, delay, or embarrass the defendants. Pryor was joined by Trump appointee Andrew Brasher and Biden appointee Embry Kidd.

Trump had sued Clinton, Comey, and others in 2022, accusing them of a racketeering conspiracy to invent false claims that his first presidential campaign had collaborated with Russia. A district court dismissed the case in January 2023 and jointly fined Habba and Trump $932,989.39.

Pryor referred to a district court’s previous findings that Trump had made a “malicious prosecution claim without a prosecution” and a “trade secret claim without a trade secret,” among others. “Trump and Habba give us no reason to reverse the district court’s ruling that these claims were frivolous,” he wrote.

The judge also wrote that the district court “did not clearly err” in determining that Trump had shown a “pattern of misusing the courts.”

Last week, a different federal appeals court panel affirmed the dismissal of Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN for using the term “the Big Lie,” calling the president’s claims “unpersuasive” and “meritless.” In September, a federal judge dismissed the president’s $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, stating it was chock full of “tedious and burdensome” language that had nothing to do with the case itself.