For years we’ve been hearing an inane idea floating around, “The government should be run like a business.” The fact that the government isn’t a business never seemed to get in the way of this stupidity. Everyone who uttered it was either willfully ignorant of or just hated the idea of our Constitution—and specifically, the Preamble.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Nowhere in this statement of the purpose of our government structure is the statement “turn a profit” or “return value to shareholders” or any other corporate gibberish.
But this idea of “government as a business” took greater and greater hold over the years as education in Civics waned in schools. Thus it suddenly sounded like a good idea to elect a “business man” as president.
The problem comes in with the guy picked for this position. Trump was never a successful business man. Sure there are a lot of buildings and properties with his name on them, but the proliferation of his brand does not equate to success. The opposite is more the case. No “business man” in history has three bankrupted casinos on his resume. The truest statement of Trump as a business man is that he played one on TV.
So now we have the insane combination of a guy who only knows how to pose as a business man running an organization that is in no way a business as if it is one. Worse, with the “help” of Elon Musk, another caricature of a business man, he’s trying to run it like it is some sort of a private equity operation—selling off parts to turn a profit on the pieces. These boys want to privatize entities the Postal Service, Social Security, Medicare and other government run entities because a hell of a lot of money runs through them. Of course their mantra is that if the government is running it, there’s waste and private owners can do a better and more efficient job. Of course this is the purest of pristine bullshit.
Anyone try to reach customer service at a major corporation these days? Try calling Facebook. You can’t. But fair warning, the only phone numbers you will find for Meta are in paid advertisements on Google that are published by criminals after access to your computers. And clicking their ad links actually takes you to a Facebook page that displays the bogus number. (More about this in a later article.)
So adding up the pieces here: failed business man, check. Fake idea of running a government like a business, check. The intention of selling off pieces of the government to the highest bidders, check.
But wait there’s more. What kind of a business does Trump think he is running? Could it be a country club? Let’s look at that. He’s floated the idea of selling memberships (gold cards) for $5 million to rich foreigners. Just like Doral or one of his other country clubs, memberships are for the rich. Why not Country Club USA. And look there’s even a club house. Forget that white relic in swampy DC, he’s got a gold-plated one in swampy Florida, Mar-a-Lago. As Lucian Truscott pointed out, Trump’s selling dinners—and the illusion of access with himself—for $1 million a plate. This gives him the ability to rake in about $10 million a night on his taxpayer funded trips on Air Force One to Marjorie Post’s old house.
Meanwhile Trump is also trying to nullify memberships to the Trump Country Club USA for people he doesn’t want here—those riffraff people who had the temerity to be born here and gain citizenship under the 14th Amendment, not to mention all the “help” who aren’t white. And his Propaganda Minister, Steven Miller, has made noises about nullifying the “memberships” of naturalized citizens.
That damn Constitution, the document he sworn an oath to uphold and defend is actually his biggest problem. So of course he didn’t put his hand on the Bible when he recited that oath as a lie. One of his first executive orders, supplied by his “I don’t know anything about it” Project 2025 crew was to try to gut the 14th Amendment. Now he’s trying to gut the freedom of the press, freedom of expression and public gathering in the 1st Amendment. And his Christian Taliban backers are just rubbing their hands together waiting on him to dispose of freedom of religion too. They want their exclusivity, damn it!
Where does Trump spend the majority of his actual time? On golf courses and at country clubs. So in the spirit of “go with what you know,” this is his frame of reference. What do you do at these joints besides bashing a ball around into holes? Rub elbows with your pals and exclude the unworthy outside the gates under the watchful eyes of security teams.
But let’s not forget the entertainment component. That’s what he does when he goes to the office. Like any “reality” show producer, Trump has to keep people guessing about what will happen in the next episode. Who will lose out and pay penalties? Who will get a temporary reprieve? Where will the next golf course property be located—Greenland, Canada, Panama, Kyiv?
The problem with this “reality show” is that America and the rest of the world can’t change the channel right now. The corruption and degradation of the Republican Party—which put this putz in place—is too complete. Almost the entire party has had a spinectomy and thus has no means to stand up for their own oaths of office.
We can always hope for a somewhat theatrical ending to the Trump reality show. Who knows, maybe he will face plant on a green someplace—like Jack Lemmon’s character in The Legend of Bagger Vance—and come around to the ghost of Roy Cohn beckoning him from the distance.
