"The thing we've seen in the Black community, which is mostly Democrat... is that President Trump's policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they're complaining about, but he can't want them to be successful more than that they want to be successful.
Presidential Senior Advisor and Son-in-Law, Jared Kusher, Whose Father Got His Otherwise Unqualified Son into Harvard with a $2.5 million donation.
When you drive across the bridge from West Palm Beach to Palm Beach, Florida, you leave the very ordinary for one of the most opulent and very walled-off residential communities on earth. You won’t fine a Starbucks in Palm Beach. About a decade ago, I had a guided tour of one of the most opulent set of residential buildings, a compound that once served as the private residence of one of the richest families in the United States, now a resort for the richest of the rich, the right-wingest of the right-wing. Seventeen-acre Mar-a-Lago (“Sea to Lake”). Every wall, every window, every fixture, every fabric, every piece of furniture screamed “money.” The only mitigating factor on my visit was the vision of and accompanying odor from a septic truck pumping out an obviously massive septic tank.
Within that set of buildings is one particular structure that represents the most opulent of the units within the resort. It is the home of the President of the United States, his official residence since he departed New York City in 2019. Trump immediately tweeted that he had been “treated very badly” by New York politicians.
It’s hard to be more isolated from what most Americans face in daily life than this profoundly separated wealthy city. Writing for the October 18th Los Angeles Times, Hailey Branson-Potts gives us a sense of how different and separated Palm Beach (a town “dripping with money”) is from the rest of America. “[It is a] tony resort town, studded on all sides with tall hedges and metal gates offering stingy glimpses of spectacular mansions… Private entrances to private beaches read: NO TRESPASSING and KEEP OUT… Sidewalks are rare in this affluent enclave President Trump calls home, befitting neighborhoods where people eye pedestrians with suspicion…
“Within heavily Democratic Palm Beach County, the town is an anomaly. About 46% of voters in Palm Beach proper are Republicans, compared with 28% in the county… In his adopted hometown, Trump has found a place that is whiter, older and richer than the country as a whole. The city of 8,800 is 93% white, compared with 60% of the United States. In broader Palm Beach County, 43% of the population is Latino or Black… The median age in town is 69. Nationally, it is 38.
“The typical value of a single-family home in Palm Beach, according to Zillow, is about $6.6 million — more than 22 times the typical U.S. single-family home value of $295,000. Last year, hedge fund billionaire Steven Schonfeld bought a Palm Beach estate for $111 million, the most expensive home ever sold in Florida, CNBC reported… ‘Palm Beach is a town for insiders,’ said Madison Sohaney, a 22-year-old social media manager visiting her boyfriend’s parents’ house on Woodbridge Road, which runs alongside Mar-a-Lago.” Mar-a-Lago has a history of wealth and privilege, a chichi property that even when donated by its owners to the National Park Service, it had to be returned because the upkeep costs were prohibitive:
“Mar-a-Lago (/ˌmɑːrəˈlɑːɡoʊ/) is a resort and national historic landmark in Palm Beach, Florida, built from 1924 to 1927 by cereal-company heiress and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post. The 126-room, 62,500-square-foot (5,810 m2) mansion contains the Mar-a-Lago Club, a members-only club with guest rooms, a spa, and other hotel-style amenities. It is located in Palm Beach County on the Palm Beach barrier island, with the Atlantic Ocean to the east and Florida's Intracoastal Waterway to the west.
“At the time of her death in 1973, Post bequeathed the property to the National Park Service, hoping it could be used for state visits or as a Winter White House, but because the costs of maintaining the property exceeded the funds provided by Post, and it was difficult to secure the facility (as it is located in the flight path of Palm Beach Airport), the property was returned to the Post Foundation by an Act of Congress in 1981.
“In 1985, Mar-a-Lago was purchased by Donald Trump at a price of around $10 million. His wife at the time, Ivana Trump, was charged with running the property. Trump retained Mar-a-Lago through both his divorces. His family maintains private quarters in a separate, closed-off area of the house and grounds…
“It is the second largest mansion in the state of Florida and the 22nd largest mansion in the United States. In 2018, Forbes estimated the value of the estate at around $160 million, having appreciated greatly throughout the past decades since Trump's purchase due to several factors such as the extensive renovation, lavish features and furniture, the exclusivity of the location, as well as its historic meaning and significance.” Wikipedia.
For a President with an amazing and obvious lack of empathy, who throws numbers around as if Americans should simply accept that wealth allows those who “have” to be treated as the relevant rulers (the new American plutocracy), the smell I remember from visiting Mar-a-Lago appears to have been a confirmation of what that compound symbolizes… to the “rest of us.” We have the greatest schism between the richest and the vast majority of the nation of any other developed nation on earth. Income inequality under Donald Trump has only become worse.
Wikipedia summarizes: “In 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 reduced personal and corporate income tax rates, which critics said would increase income inequality… Also in 2017, Forbes found that just three individuals (Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates) held more money than the bottom half of the population.
“In 2018, and for the first time in U.S. history, U.S. billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than the working class. A study found that the average effective tax rate paid by the richest 400 families in the country was 23 percent, a full percentage point lower than the 24.2 percent rate paid by the bottom half of American households.
“In September 2019, the Census Bureau reported that income inequality in the United States had reached its highest level in 50 years, with the GINI index [a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income inequality or wealth inequality within a nation or any other group of people] increasing from 48.2 in 2017 to 48.5 in 2018… In December 2019, CBO [Congressional Budget Office] forecast that inequality would increase between 2016 and 2021.”
If you look at the above older picture of Mar-a-Lago, look at the numbers defining Palm Beach and listen to Donald Trump’s assumptions about and vision for America, you just might understand how far away from normal America Donald Trump’s experience and understanding truly is. And how much additional damage Donald Trump can still inflict on this country.
I’m Peter Dekom, and while being rich is not a disqualifier from holding high public office, when that wealth is combined with a brutal lack of concern for the relevant constituents, voters really need to wake up before they vote for their own marginalization and potential destruction.
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