Our art director, Andrei Rublev (Wmxdesign), rarely writes about his creative process. He surprised me by doing so today, when he sent over the above piece: What would Warhol do with this current iteration of Trump? A broken man since childhood, trying to find self-esteem among stolen and borrowed dollar bills-- an insecure man surrounded by purchased women and a thin facade of success. Would Warhol find that Trump is a media icon to be dissected and splayed to see what went wrong? Unknowable at this point-- but he would most likely target the most apparent quality of the Trump psychogenic personality. That distillation would probably be Self Pity. The complete collapse of the Trump myth is unfolding across all media; it repeats endlessly. Donald John Trump is an Andy Warhol installation that has unravelled through the decades. Trump is a raw id, ego, superego catastrophe in plain sight. We all look. We can’t look away whether we watch in disgust or blind adulation. For Trump, the full embodiment of Self-pity amplified across all media repeats ad infinitum. Warhol would retch and then make art from the sputum. I believe he's calling it Self-pity Amplified Across All Media Repeats Ad Infinitum.On Friday, Lois Frankel (D-FL), Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Steve Cohen (TN) in the House and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in the Senate introduced the very timely THUG Act (Trump’s Heist Undermines the G-7). The bill was meant to prohibit funding for the G-7 Summit at the Trump National Doral and would require Trump to submit to all documents to Congress that are related to his decision to host the G-7 Summit at his property. There was no question the bill would have passed-- and with the support of some Republicans. Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson explained that "The prospect that Trump Administration would set aside the Constitution to line the President’s pockets by choosing to host the upcoming G-7 Conference to prop up one the President’s failing properties is enormously troubling... We need to get to the bottom of how the decision to host this National Security Special Event at one of the President’s resorts was made and whether President’s financial interests may have outweighed homeland security concerns." As Frankel explained, "Trump is unashamed of his corruption. He is abusing the office of the Presidency and violating law by directing millions of dollars of American and foreign money to his family enterprises by holding an important meeting of world leaders at his Doral resort."Rep. Cohen went even further: "I am deeply concerned about President Trump’s priorities. Rather than focus on the American people, he seems to be busy padding his wallet with taxpayer and foreign money. The federal government isn’t his personal piggy bank nor should it be the promotional arm of the Trump Organization. The announcement that the next G7 Summit will be held at his Doral Miami resort is a brazen example of the corruption and self-dealing that has characterized this administration. I believe this is a direct abuse of the president’s power and an emoluments clause violation. Beyond that, no public official should take any action suggesting an improper motive, and this has impropriety written all over it. The THUG Act would force the Administration to turn over documents on how a Trump property was chosen and prevent federal funds from being spent at the President’s Doral Miami resort to host the G7 Summit."A few hours later this whiny-bitch tweet appeared, surrounding while defending his bed-bug infested cash-starved resort:So what happened? Miami Tribune reporters Michael Wilner, Francesca Chambers and Devoun Cetoute were on the case last last. Drowning in criticism from all sides, Trump reversed himself, objected surrounding to public opinion less than three days after the plans were first announced. Democrats, they wrote "vowed to add the case to a sweeping federal lawsuit accusing the president of repeatedly violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution."
Trump initially previewed his plan to pick Trump National Doral at this year’s G-7 summit in France over the summer, citing the golf resort’s proximity to Miami International Airport and its isolation from pedestrians.But the announcement itself was rolled out hastily.Originally scheduled for earlier in the week, the decision to name the location was delayed until Thursday, when Mulvaney hosted a media briefing.Mulvaney acknowledged he was initially “skeptical” of the selection, but ultimately came to believe it was the “perfect physical location,” he told reporters. And he insisted there would be “no issue here on him profiting from this in any way, shape, or form” from the selection of Doral.“I would suggest that he probably doesn’t need much help promoting his brand, so we’ll put the profit one aside and deal with a perfect place,” he said.The summit was scheduled to take place on June 9-13, 2020, and would have marked Miami’s debut on the international stage. Heads of state from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom would have converged on the site for for their yearly meeting.The nations rotate hosting duties, and Trump said he was interested in the United States inviting the nations to his golf resort, but Miami Herald records requests to the City of Doral, the office of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and local police found no evidence of communication from Washington about potentially hosting the summit.Gimenez told The Herald that he spoke to Trump during by phone when Hurricane Dorian threatened Miami in August, in which the president told him that he was thinking about hosting the summit in Miami-Dade.After two calls to the Secret Service’s Miami office and strong hints from Trump, the City of Doral had assigned an extra $270,000 to the city’s police budget to cover security costs tied to the summit, Doral Mayor Juan Carlos Bermudez said.
