It was a bit of a long shot, but if we're not going to debate Donald Trump's flagrant corruption in the press or in Congress then the people of Washington, D.C., wanted, at the least, to take it up with the local liquor board. There's no way, a collection of residents have complained, Trump can be considered to have the "good character" required to run a bar in their town. So they want local officials to rescind the Trump International Hotel's liquor license.
In their grievance to the city’s Alcohol Beverage Control Board, the group presented a litany of what they say are Trump’s moral failures, calling him a liar, a fraudster and a racist who associates with criminals.
All of these are factually true. Trump has defrauded those he's worked with all his life; ask them and they’ll readily tell you so. He certainly would never be accused of telling the truth except by sheer coincidence or accident. He's made racist statements on national television approximately forever.
But most to the point, Trump hangs out with crooks, and a fairly astounding number of them. The man's home address is a den of international criminals and suspected criminals, a money laundering haven. He has decades of ties to organized crime figures, both American and Russian. Forget going back decades, the man's current hangers-on are currently being indicted left and right, or are resigning their administration positions in scandal. His family's charitable "foundation" is being investigated as a tax avoidance and personal enrichment scam, he recently settled a case charging his self-named "university" was nothing but a money-squeezing racket, and son number one—the creature allegedly in charge of making sure the Trump hotel business stays afloat while daddy runs the government for a while, may or may not have done a little light treason in service of helping pa gain a few votes in the swing states.
The Trump hotel caters to a seedy clientele, a clientele that shuffles through the place in large part to kiss the ring of the launderer in chief. You've got crooked public servants stopping in after their private jet flights on the taxpayer dime. You've got your oil companies and your foreign dignitaries paying their respects by kicking a few bucks to the commander in chief. The only respite from the crookedness is a steady stream of hat-wearing out-of-town tourists coming to take pictures of all the crookedness.
I tell you, this sort of thing is going to bring down property values.
In the end, the board dodged the question, saying a review of the hotel’s license cannot be conducted until the hotel applies for a renewal next March. So unless an appeal is successful, we’ll be back here then, when undoubtably even more of Trump’s immediate circle will be under indictment or in prison and the board will have even more evidence of Trump’s “character.”
Say what you want about Donald Trump the politician or ex-television celebrity or devoted hat-seller, this is not the sort of person you want running the neighborhood bar, and it doesn't matter how much gold leaf or caviar you layer on top of it. Any idiot can be president, but local liquor licenses should be a bit harder to come by. Good God, man, there are standards involved.