The Center For Public Integrity, which is probably hiring at a frenzied pace at the moment, would like you all to sing along.
Gimme the beat, boys, and free my soul/I want to get lost in your rock and roll/And grift away.
Prospective million-dollar donors to the "Opening Day 2017" event — slated for Jan. 21, the day after inauguration, at Washington, D.C.'s Walter E. Washington Convention Center — receive a "private reception and photo opportunity for 16 guests with President Donald J. Trump," a "multi-day hunting and/or fishing excursion for 4 guests with Donald Trump, Jr. and/or Eric Trump, and team," as well as tickets to other events and "autographed guitars by an Opening Day 2017 performer."
I'm starting to get the feeling that the spalpeens are going to be the ones who get El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago's keister in a crack for him. They are young and energetic versions of Himself, and their desire to hoover up every last dime from the opportunity that fate and the Electoral College has dumped in their laps appears to be bottomless. Ivanka's going to be OK, I think, but the B'wana Twins would sell the Oval Office for parts and use the money to shoot up the National Zoo.
The brochure for "Opening Day 2017," an event described as "honoring President Donald J. Trump," offers sponsor packages ranging from $25,000 to $1 million. The event will "celebrate the great American tradition of outdoor sporting, shooting, fishing and conservation," the brochure states. Mike Ingram, an Arizona developer who is listed as one of the co-chairmen, said Beach approached him to help. "I'm honored to do it," he said. "It's not going to be a black tie event. It's going to be boots and jeans and camouflage and it's going to raise a lot of money to go to sportsman's charities" and conservation charities, he said.
For a mere quarter-mil, you can butch it up with some of the luckiest members of the Lucky Sperm Club. Break out the Zegna camo and sing it for us one more time.
Meanwhile, the basic ideological framework of the latest hirelings down at Camp Runamuck is becoming clearer almost by the day. For example, just this week, we learned that two of the new members of the staff have some interesting friends. It seems that the National Security Advisor is connected to European neo-Nazis, while the new budget director is a hot ticket among largely forgotten domestic wingnut organizations.
First, the latest on Michael Flynn, courtesy of Foreign Policy.
Heinz-Christian Strache, Freedom Party leader, and Norbert Hofer, the candidate who narrowly lost Austria's presidential election earlier this month, signed a "working agreement" on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party, according to a statement from the Freedom Party. The statement also said Strache visited New York last month to meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominated national security advisor, Michael Flynn. Trump team did not immediately respond to Foreign Policy's request for comment.
At the risk of being called a neo-McCarthyite, may I point out that this smacks an awful lot of the incoming administration's involvement in a worldwide right-wing movement at the center of which is our good friend Vladimir Putin. But, I guess I shouldn't be concerned because the Obama White House decided it wouldn't be, how you say, cricket to mention this whole thing to the voters before the election. The dumbassery of that move is going to echo for decades.
While General Nuisance there was networking among the jackboots-and-Armani crowd overseas, back in July, Mick Mulvaney, the president-elect's choice to help him manage the federal budget, climbed into the Wayback Machine and set the dials for 1952. Mother Jones found him there.
His July speech, flagged by the Democratic opposition research group American Bridge, was billed as an address on "the Federal Reserve's role in bailing out Europe." According to its website, the John Birch Society believes that the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional and should be abolished and that "the only constitutional money is gold and silver coin." After South Carolina Democrats criticized Mulvaney for appearing before the group, he defended the decision, saying, "I regularly speak to groups across the political spectrum because my constituents deserve access to their congressman. I can't remember ever turning down an opportunity to speak to a group based on the group's political ideology."
The JBS revived itself in recent years through gulling the rubes on subjects like the Fed and Agenda 21, the secret UN plan to steal all our golfs. To those of us of a certain age, however, they always will be the folks who thought Ike was a comsymp, and the people behind None Dare Call It Treason, which I read all the way through on a rainy afternoon while I was in high school and which kicked off my irresistible sweet-tooth for rightwing nutballishness. (And John Stormer is still alive? Who knew?) It's nice to know all those years of study haven't been wasted. This administration is turning into the grease trap of American political history.
Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
