Send in the Clowns—Don’t Bother They’re Here By Maria Grant

When I was in consulting, sometimes something so crazy would happen that the whole client team would burst out into uncontrollable laughter. Inevitably someone would say, “You can’t make this stuff up!”  I thought about that exclamation many times last week. Here’s why. 

Last week, President Trump announced that his presidential library will be built in Miami. It will be a 47-floor skyscraper, the first skyscraper to serve as a presidential library. But wait. Then it was announced that it won’t really be a library. Instead, it will be a hotel. (Big surprise.) An enormous atrium will hold the $400 million Boeing 747-8 gifted to Trump by the government of Qatar, a modern Air Force fighter jet, and a Marine attack helicopter. 

Some reports indicate the atrium will also house a larger-than-life gold statue of Trump. Apparently, a gold escalator will ascend at least two stories–likely the highlight of the atrium in the mind of the man who envisioned it. Trump plans to raise billions of dollars to build this monument to himself. 

So far, there has been no mention of books or presidential papers to be housed in this library. Perhaps this is not surprising given this president doesn’t read his daily presidential briefings, relevant white papers, policy statements, or other important documents. He prefers to spend his time focusing on social media and ranting on Truth Social. 

Secretary of Defense (or War) Pete Hegseth, the former weekend anchor of Fox News, who once ran a 50-employee nonprofit into the ground (his only managerial experience), has been accused in the past of public intoxication, vomiting in bushes, sexual harassment, passing out in public places, and cheating on two of his three wives. Now Hegseth ends every update on the Iran war with a prayer. Here is a sample ending of one such prayer: “I ask God for wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” 

Hegseth ousted Army Chief of Staff General Randy George and two other generals last week in the midst of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. He had previously fired a number of senior military officers, including most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Last week Hegseth also blocked the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals. Two of the targeted offers are Black and two are women. I suppose he did so because he knows there is no way God would support such diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

The husband of former Director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem was in the news last week. Reports allege that Mr. Noem engaged in a “bimbofication” fetish. Reports allege that Noem used a pseudonym to chat with online webcam models, paying more than $25,000 to engage in role play, which involved wearing prosthetic breasts and feminine clothing. Counter-intelligence experts have highlighted potential national security risks, suggesting his actions could make him a target for blackmail. 

The Noem family has requested privacy as they grapple with this issue. I don’t blame them. But that request for privacy is a far cry from the publicity Kristi Noem sought when she spent more than 220 million taxpayer dollars on video ads which featured her riding on horseback through Mount Rushmore to ensure the safety of Americans. And let’s not forget that dollar amount is just the tip of the iceberg as you begin to unpack the dollars spent shipping ICE agents to cities where no one wanted them. 

Noem also didn’t seem too concerned about privacy when reports from The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic alleged that she and aide Corey Lewandowski traveled together in luxury private jets and that Lewandowski spent significant time at Noem’s government-provided Housing. (For her residence, Noem decided to live at the waterfront property normally reserved for the U.S Coast Guard’s top admiral which is located in Southwest D.C.)  

Last week Vice President J.D. Vance, the former senator from Ohio and author of Hillbilly Elegy, announced he is releasing a new book in June titled Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith. The book details Vance’s conversion to Catholicism which occurred in 2019. Unfortunately, Vance’s team did not do sufficient research when selecting the photo for the book cover. The church featured on the cover is a small white steepled church surrounded by foliage and a beautiful sunrise. Here’s the bad news. The church is not a Catholic church. It’s a photo of a United Methodist Church located in Mt. Zion, Virginia. The photo is a widely used stock image from Getty Images. Locals in Mt. Zion claim the church is in a state of disrepair and usually holds only one service each month. 

And it gets worse. Both the current and former Popes—leaders of the Catholic church–have denounced some of Vance’s views, claiming they are in opposition to the priorities set by the Vatican for Catholics. 

And finally, Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi last week. You know, the woman who shouted in her last congressional hearing, “Trump is the most transparent president in history.” And then she asked members of the Committee, “Why are you laughing?” Analysts claim that Trump fired her because he didn’t like the way Bondi handled the Epstein files. (“The Epstein client list is sitting on my desk right now.”)  He was also worried about her upcoming hearing on the Epstein files. Plus, he was not impressed with her inability to successfully prosecute many of his enemies–James Comey, Letitia James, Lisa Cook, Adam Schiff, John Bolton, Alvin Bragg, John Brennan, Mark Kelly, Jerome Powell–the list goes on. Clearly, the fact that there was little evidence of criminality against any of them didn’t factor into his firing decision. 

When I studied English literature in graduate school, I took three courses in Theater of the Absurd. I remember that the playwright Eugene Ionesco once said that reality is irrational. He believed “theater should reflect the existential absurdity of the human condition—devoid of purpose—by using nonsensical dialogue, surreal scenarios, and illogical structures to illustrate the breakdown of communication and meaning.” Dear readers, we have arrived at Ionesco’s definition of absurdity.