President Donald Trump makes America worse than tacky

Jackie Calmes, Tribune News Service

For President Donald Trump, it's all about appearances. He's busy with so many makeovers: The Versailles-ification of the Oval Office, which seems to sprout more gold leaf and ornamentation every time Trump assembles the media there. The paving of the Rose Garden, now Mar-a-Lago Patio North, crowded with white tables and yellow umbrellas just as at his Florida retreat. The estimated billion-dollar conversion of a Qatari luxury jet built for a king, more in keeping with Trump's tastes than the "less impressive" Air Force One. Even a new golf cart, the six-figure armored Golf Force One. And, assuming Trump gets his way, as he mostly does, he'll break ground soon on a $200-million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a veritable Hall of Mirrors nearly doubling the footprint of the White House.

The president has $257 million from ever-compliant Republicans in Congress to transform the nearby Kennedy Center into the "Trump/Kennedy Center," as Trump immodestly suggested on Tuesday. (Meanwhile, the purported populist president has canceled grants to local arts groups across America and seeks to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, which underwrites cultural events in every state.) Even the medallions for the annual Kennedy Center Honors winners are getting a makeover — from Tiffany & Co., natch. Trump, having made himself the Kennedy Center chair after a first term in which he skipped the honors shows by popular demand, was there on Wednesday to announce the 2025 honorees.

Let's pause here to consider just how Fox News and MAGA World would react if the president overseeing all this extravagance were named Biden, Obama or Clinton.

These preoccupations of the reality-show president are a metaphor for something much bigger, however — Trump's virtually unchecked makeover of the entire US government as well as its major institutions of education, culture, law and more, all in service of the appearance of gilded grandeur and raw power: His. Consider recent events. After federal data showed worrying job losses in recent months — not a good look for the self-styled economic wizard — Trump fired the wonky bureaucrat who runs the Bureau of Labor Statistics in favor of a MAGA flunky disdained by economists of all stripes for his bias and ignorance. Only the best.

Cultural gems — eight Smithsonian Institution museums — are in for a Trumpian overhaul. "White House to Vet Smithsonian Museums to Fit Trump's Historical Vision" was the Wall Street Journal headline this week. So Trump, the historical visionary who once seemed to think abolitionist Frederick Douglass was still alive and whose Homeland Security Department this week seemingly promoted a neo-Nazi book on its social media account, will curate American life and history for posterity. What could go wrong?

Though Vladimir Putin refuses to compromise or cease firing on Ukraine, making a mockery of Trump's talk of brokering peace on Day 1, Trump plans to reward the Putin on Friday with the ultimate recognition: a summit on American soil. After all, a summit gets so much more media attention than a mere private phone call. So what if nothing comes of it, as with Trump's first-term "summitry" with Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. It's the televised power struts that count.

Want to look tough on crime? Trump the performance artist has militarised the nation's capital just as he did Los Angeles, declaring a crime emergency in a city where crime is at a 30-year low. (As with the jobs numbers, the White House disputed the crime data.) The president called up 800 National Guard troops and myriad federal agents to patrol Washington, a power he declined to use for three long hours on Jan. 6, 2021, when the city actually did face rioting. Trump is so into scene-setting that he'd rather put FBI agents on the DC streets than leave them to their behind-the-scenes work on counterintelligence and anti-terrorism.

I don't feel safer. This isn't just an anti-crime show for Trump, however. He says it's also about beautification. "I'm going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before," he posted on social media. This from the president who was untroubled by his supporters defiling and defecating in the Capitol on Jan. 6. As a longtime resident, I don't recognize the dystopian city he describes; as a citizen, I'm offended.

And of course Trump's power play is also about fundraising. What isn't about money for him? In an email solicitation on Tuesday, he boasted to would-be donors that he'd "LIBERATED" the capital from "Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum." You know what's really scummy? Constant money-grubbing. Washington and Los Angeles likely are just dry runs for Trump's future shows of force. He's repeatedly threatened similar crackdowns in other Democratic-run cities. And on Tuesday, the Washington Post broke the news of a Pentagon plan for a "Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force" with 600 National Guard troops on permanent standby to deploy at Trump's command. All of this is of dubious legality, but when has that stopped him?

Whether the subject is crime, tariffs, immigration, whatever, Trump just declares an emergency to supposedly justify his aggrandizement of power. Never mind that each emergency reflects a problem that's long-standing and not a crisis. Absent these declarations, Trump would have to govern with Congress and pass legislation to try to actually solve problems, as the framers intended. That means time, tedium, policy details and compromise — hardly the stuff of a camera-ready wannabe action hero/strongman.

Say Trump's orchestrated gerrymandering in Texas and other red states doesn't work in the 2026 midterm elections and Democrats take control of the House. It's not hard to imagine him declaring an emergency and sending in the military to seize voting machines. Trump was restrained from issuing just such an order after the 2020 election. Yes, he's a busy man. But you know what Trump hasn't done? Release the Epstein files. Wouldn't be good for appearances.