Perhaps the objection is that Obama mocked not the proletariat but the nouveaux riche. But to the limited extent Obama himself possesses richesse, it’s a whole lot more nouveau than Donald Trump’s. The Trump fortune (net worth: $6.6 billion) builds on the killing Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump made running a brothel in the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s and the real estate fortune amassed atop that by Trump’s father, Fred C. Trump. According to a New York Times investigation, Fred Trump was paying little Donald $200,000 per year at the age of 3, and big Donald eventually accumulated “at least $413 million” from Fred. By contrast, the Obama fortune (net worth: $70 million) is less than ten years old and has no parental component.
If the curse of patrimonial capitalism was once ameliorated somewhat by the blessing of refined taste, Trump is living proof that we can no longer count on that. Trump’s taste in architecture and design is execrable, rendering it all the more poignant that this is the realm where Trump feels most confident. “I am a very aesthetic person,” Trump explained last year, sounding exactly like Dustin Huffman boasting repeatedly in Rain Man, “I’m an excellent driver.” Trump is, as Spy magazine observed decades ago, a short-fingered vulgarian, and it’s telling that when Spy levelled this memorable accusation, Trump raged against the “short-fingered” part but didn’t seem to register the “vulgarian” part. In most respects a deeply insecure man—hence the frantic boastfulness, especially about his intelligence—Trump is at his least defensive and most serene when describing his strengths as a builder. That’s because he feels unaccountably confident about them.
Yes, I am faulting Trump for possessing bad taste. If that consigns me to the cultural elite, then I’ve got a ridiculous amount of company. In July a Washington Post-Ipsos poll asked more than 2,600 adults in the United States their opinion about Trump’s ballroom, the 250-foot Arc de Trump, and his remodeling of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Nearly 65 percent said they were dissatisfied with or upset by them. The feeling of revulsion is so widespread that, Dan Diamond and Luke Connors reported last week in the Post, Democrats have spent at least $1.8 million on ads highlighting Trump’s decision to tear down the East Wing to make way for the ballroom. A Post-Ipsos poll of 2,545 Americans earlier this month found that 59 percent agreed Trump spent “too much time” on his construction projects in the White House and around Washington.
