Reminder: The president regularly spends the weekend hobnobbing privately with rich clients

[mahatmakanejeeves]

David Fahrenthold Retweeted

The president of the United States will often fly to his private clubs on the taxpayers' dime where he meets with people who are often customers of those businesses -- and of him -- and where they have at times been able to influence his decision-making.

Link to tweet

Politics Analysis
Reminder: The president regularly spends the weekend hobnobbing privately with rich clients

By Philip Bump
March 11 at 12:44 PM

President Trump returned to the White House from his private resort in Florida on Sunday. In total, Trump has spent all or part of 42 weekend days at the resort since his inauguration — time during which his schedule is almost always kept completely private.

Shortly after Trump was inaugurated, this was novel. When Trump’s press team called a lid on the day on Feb. 18, 2017 — meaning that Trump would not be doing anything else publicly — he nonetheless later attended a fundraising gala being hosted at the resort. How Trump spent his time at Mar-a-Lago had attracted considerable attention a few days earlier when it was revealed that Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, then visiting Trump, had held an impromptu discussion about national security in the middle of the resort’s dining room. ... Since then, though, Trump’s habit of simply dropping into Mar-a-Lago events barely warrants a mention. This weekend, he made another visit to a fundraiser at the club that wasn’t on his calendar. That’s just sort of how it goes.

It’s obviously useful for Mar-a-Lago to have Trump drop in at events on occasion — meaning that it’s indirectly valuable to Trump as well, given that he still owns the place. But it’s not Trump’s attendance at public fundraisers that really ought to raise eyebrows. It’s the rest of the time he spends chatting up whoever happens to be there. The time he spends greeting and schmoozing with the unidentified people who have paid him money to access the “winter White House.” ... We got a vivid example of this over the weekend. Mother Jones magazine reported that a woman named Li Yang had been advertising her ability to get access to Trump — via Mar-a-Lago.
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There are two ways in which the issue of access at Mar-a-Lago is additionally complicated.

The first is that Trump’s schedule is often free from interactions with possible critics. He engages the media when he’s boarding Marine One or at White House events, but his weekends are heavily spent with clients at his private properties and his public events are often ones centered on his reelection. ... The other is that his trips to Mar-a-Lago aren’t free. He’s made 21 trips there as president, costing well over $60 million and likely generating nearly $400,000 in revenue for the resort. The resort that he owns. When one member of the National Security Council visited for two nights in March 2017, the government’s tab ran more than $1,000.
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Philip Bump is a correspondent for The Washington Post based in New York. Before joining The Post in 2014, he led politics coverage for the Atlantic Wire. Follow https://twitter.com/pbump

[Botany]

1. Good thing he "saved" 1/2 of a second by saying Tim Apple instead of Tim Cook from Apple Computer

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211909073

[Blue Owl]

2. Slobnobbing, more like

n/t