Trump has been feuding with Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter since Carter was at Spy in the 1980's referring to Trump as a "short-fingered vulgarian," implying that he's not just a disgusting person but that he has a small penis. Trump has been obsessing over it for 30 years. If Trump was actually the owner of Vanity Fair he could hardly have done more for them than he did yesterday morning when he woke up and tweeted some typical Trump nonsense (above), calling massive attention to a restaurant review by Tina Nguyen few people would have otherwise seen, a review that suggests Trump Grill is a contender for worst restaurant in the country-- a place that serves very mediocre food "for timid people with digestive problems."
Donald Trump is “a poor person’s idea of a rich person,” Fran Lebowitz recently observed at The Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit. “They see him. They think, ‘If I were rich, I’d have a fabulous tie like that.’” Nowhere, perhaps, does this reflection appear more accurate than at Trump Grill (which is occasionally spelled Grille on various pieces of signage). On one level, the Grill (or Grille), suggests the heights of plutocratic splendor-- a steakhouse built into the basement of one’s own skyscraper... And like all exclusive bastions of haute cuisine, there is a sandwich board in front advertising two great prix fixe deals.The allure of Trump’s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich. The inconsistent menus—literally, my menu was missing dishes that I found on my dining partners’-- were chock-full of steakhouse classics doused with unnecessarily high-end ingredients. The dumplings, for instance, come with soy sauce topped with truffle oil, and the crostini is served with both hummus and ricotta, two exotic ingredients that should still never be combined. The menu itself would like to impress diners with how important it is, randomly capitalizing fancy words like “Prosciutto” and “Julienned” (and, strangely, ”House Salad”)....[I]t was slop: as soon as I got home, I brushed my teeth twice and curled up in bed until the nausea passed....I reflexively want to be generous in my assessment of what the post-election Trump Grill says about the Trump presidency. Perhaps it’s a sign that Trump is in over his head, and a shallow, mediocre man who runs a shallow, mediocre business empire (and restaurant) would sink and implode, crushing the expectations of millions of his hopeful supporters. But watching Trump parade his enemies through the nearby lobby, taunting them with prestigious appointments only to cruelly humiliate them, I had to look over at the human cattle herd at the Trump Grill, overwhelming a well-meaning staff with their dreams of a meal fit for a president, and wonder if he cared about any of them, either.
I know I would never have seen that review, let alone republished it here, had it not been from Trump's early morning tweet-rage. Nor would I have seen this lovely photograph of el President-elect Señor Trumpanzee having his short fingers attended to.And, by the way, as we've mentioned in the past, Graydon Carter is also something of a restauranteur and there's been culinary rancor between him and el Presidente-elect forever, as we see in the 2013 classic Trumpanzee tweet just above. The Waverly Inn, still going strong... and using Trump's attacks as promotional material.UPDATE: Trumpanzee Impact On Vanity FairVanity Fair broke its one-day subscription record thanks to el-Presidente-elect Señor Trumpanzee's silly, fatuous and gratuitous attack on them and their editor this week. New subscriptions increased 100 fold after Trump woke up, chopped up some Adderall, snorted it and started his maniacal tweeting.
Vanity Fair has seen a 2 percent increase in revenues YoY, and is set to be profitable in 2016, according to Condé Nast. Digital revenues are up 74 percent YoY, and make up 18 percent of the brand’s overall revenue. This is up from 11 percent of the overall revenues in 2015.Circulation is up 2.8 percent at the magazine, according to the AAM statements for June 2015/2016. The mid-year audit posted the magazine's circulation at 1,232,588, compared to 1,197,922 in 2015.In addition, VF.com had 14.3 million unique views in October, according to ComScore-- a 26.5 percent increase YoY.